Defining an Exchange 2007 E-Mail Address Policy, Part 2

If you have done much work with Exchange Server 2003 or Exchange 2000 Server, then you are probably familiar with the concept of recipient policies. Recipient policies still exist in Exchange Server 2007, but they have been broken into two different components; accepted domains (which I covered in Defining an Exchange 2007 E-Mail Address Policy, Part 1), and E-Mail address policies (Which I’m about to cover). E-mail address policies are the policies that allow you to define an Active Directory user’s E-mail address.

Creating an E-Mail Address Policy

Now that we have defined our accepted domains, we can create a new E-mail address policy. To do so, navigate through the console tree to Organization Configuration | Hub Transport. Next, click the New E-Mail Address Policy link, found in the Actions pane. When you do, Exchange will launch the New E-Mail Address Policy Wizard.

The Wizard’s initial screen will prompt you to enter a name for the policy that you are creating, and to choose the types of recipients that you want to apply the policy to. I recommend leaving the All Recipient Types setting enabled in most cases.  You can see what this screen looks like in Figure A.

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Figure A Enter a name for the policy that you are creating, and leave the All Recipient Types option selected.

Click Next, and you will be taken to a screen that’s similar to the one that’s shown in Figure B. Even though you have already told the wizard that you want to apply the policy to all recipient types, this screen allows you to narrow things down and apply the policy only to specific recipients, based on the recipient’s various attributes. For example, you could use the options on this screen to configure the policy so that it only applies to recipients who reside in a certain state. Of course you could also just leave these conditions blank, and the policy will apply to everyone. When you have made your selections and populated any necessary attribute fields, click Next.

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Figure B You can set conditions on the new E-Mail address policy.

The next step in the configuration process is to actually define the E-mail addresses that will be assigned to the users to whom the new E-Mail Address Policy applies. Begin the process by clicking the Add button. When you do, the wizard will display the SMTP E-Mail Addresses dialog box, shown in Figure C.

 

Defining an Exchange 2007 E Mail Address Policy Part 2 3

Figure C This is the screen where you actually define the recipient’s E-mail address format.

As you can see in the figure, this is the screen where you can actually define the E-mail address format. To define an E-mail address policy, you must begin by verifying that the E-Mail Address Local Part check box is selected. Once you have done that, choose the option that fits the format that you want to use for the E-mail address. For example, you can base the address on the user’s alias, the user’s first initial and last name, first name and last initial, or any of the other available choices.

The lower portion of the screen gives you the option of either manually specifying a fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or of selecting an accepted domain. Since we have already gone through the trouble of defining an accepted domain, choose the Select Accepted Domain for E-Mail Address option, and then click Browse and select the address that you defined earlier.

Click OK, and the address format that you have chosen to use is added to the wizard’s current screen. If you need to make a change to the address format that you have chosen, you can select the address and click the Edit button. Assuming that everything appears to be OK though, click the Next button, and you will be taken to a screen that asks you when you want to apply the new policy. This is a very welcome change from Exchange Server 2003, because Exchange 2003 relied on the Recipient Update Service, which didn’t always work right. When it did work, it sometimes took a really long time to make a policy change effective. In Exchange 2007, the wizard’s current screen allows you to make the policy change effective immediately, or to schedule the policy change.

When you are satisfied with the choices that you have made, click Next, followed by New to create the new E-Mail address policy.

Conclusion

Although creating an E-mail address policy isn’t very complicated, the procedure for doing so is quite a bit different from how things were done in previous versions of Exchange. In this article, I have shown you how to work through the new interface to define an E-mail address policy.

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