To the scene of the slaughter, which is precisely what we’re about to do our competitors in antispam and message management space. So come by tomorrow for the first announcement and general availability of the 4.0 feature set.

This is pretty big. How big? Microsoft and OWN teamed up on it and the offering crushes even what Microsoft has or will likely ever have. Yes, that Microsoft. It also takes OWN and it’s partners a mile ahead of the S+S game and instantly makes everyone, I said EVERYONE, an enterprise messaging user with the kind of scale and ___ you won’t get even in an executive role at Fortune 500.

Oh, and it won’t cost you anything more than what you’re already paying, that is if you listened to me. See ya at da bloodbath.

Back in Exchange 2003 times the most frequent complaint users had with Exchange was the 32kb quota on e-mail rules. Even casual users would hit this limit as they tried to organize their Inbox and Microsoft listened to the feedback. So with Exchange 2007 the rule size doubled to 64kb, still far short of some demands. Exchange 2007 supports 256kb rules, but how do you enable that?

Click here to find out…

P.S. Yup, back to writing technical articles again. With the Exchange 2007 about to land into the laps of SMB folks in a few months it’s time to start talking about this two year product again

Microsoft has released two important updates to the messaging infrastructure this week. Exchange 2007 SP1 (which you should be running) now goes to Update Rollup 3 fixing the issues of it taking foreeeeever to open the Exchange System Manager MMC console to launch. Outlook 2007 also gets a refresh aleviating the issues where hung dialog boxes and forms would stop Outlook from responding and eventually required a three finger salute to take out and then wait for the ost to be checked and rebuilt.

These have been significant problems for us and our clients so if you’ve experienced them get to patching. We have tested the Exchange update rollup significantly and its currently running on the OWN enterprise grid around the world and so far 0 trouble tickets raise. Outlook I wouldn’t know about, I’m OWA2007 all the way - the desktop be damned.

Note: If you are new to Microsoft Exchange 2007 be careful with the patches. Microsoft Exchange 2007 currently has two production branches with two production patch updates. If you are running the Exchange 2007 without Service Pack 1 you have one update rollup to install, if you have the version with Service Pack 1 there is another update rollup to apply.

So Howard emails me yesterday about a problem he’s been trying to figure out. His Outlook Web Access 2007 on the Exchange 2007 installation suddenly stopped working. Nothing changed

There are many reasons why Outlook Web Access 2007 will give you the “Service Unavailable” error message, mostly because the mail/public databases are not running, something you will be able to quickly determine from the Event Viewer. However, this one was slightly different. This event viewer generated the following error message, with event code 2268:

Event ID: 2268
Raw Event ID : 2268
Record Nr. : 3746
Source: W3SVC-WP
Category: None
Type : Error
Machine : ACISERVER2
Description:
Could not load all ISAPI filters for site/service. Therefore startup aborted.

Event ID: 2274
Raw Event ID : 2274
Record Nr. : 3745
Source: W3SVC-WP
Category: None
Type : Error
Machine : ACISERVER2
Description:
ISAPI Filter ‘C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\aspnet_filter.dll’ could not be loaded due to a configuration problem. The current configuration only supports loading images built for a AMD64 processor architecture. The data field contains the error number. To learn more about this issue, including how to troubleshooting this kind of processor architecture mismatch error, see http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=29349.

Confirm it, restart IIS and you will see the following error:

Basically, you (or the software you were installing) switched your IIS site where OWA is installed into either a 32bit mode or ASP.NET 1.1. Since Exchange 2007 Outlook Web Access 2007 only runs on ASP.NET 2.0 in 64bit mode, you need to fix it back.

First, disable the 32bit mode for your web site. By default OWA goes into the Default Web Site context (0) so the following will take care of that:

cscript C:\inetpub\adminscripts\adsutil.vbs SET W3SVC/AppPools/Enable32bitAppOnWin64 0

Second, register ASP.NET 2.0 as the default framework for that web site:

C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v2.0.50727>
aspnet_regiis.exe -i
Start installing ASP.NET (2.0.50727).
……………………………….
Finished installing ASP.NET (2.0.50727)

Restart IIS and you should be all set.

Remember, you have to be careful with third party software deployments and IIS on the 64bit platform. Before you do your rollouts create the web site for it, put it in its own worker group. If you allow it to do its own deployment it will usually go into the Default Web Site, DefaultAppPool and you’ll be reading this blog post again. Also remember that just because the software says it’s 64bit it doesn’t mean all the components of it (like web control panels) are 64bit as well.

In this case, it was Symantec AV that did it.

Also, I write technical articles on weekends so that Damian Leibaschoff can score a few hours of overtime. Time to give brother a raise…

Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2007 using cached-mode is one of the most powerful marriages in the business software space. But like most marriages, it can be tough when the partners aren’t working together, or when one of them is having a secret affair with a particular spindle in your RAID set. As the Outlook gains weight and starts cheating with the RAID set more and more, things tend to break. Then you find out. Every time you try to see your kids, the Outlook 2007 tells you that she can’t let you see them because you were a bastard that didn’t take care of her (OST size) or the house (computer) and she will not let you see your kids until you start showing some responsibility, fix the house (defrag) and spend some more time with her (scanpst/scanost).

In all honesty, finding your Outlook OST, corruption the first thing in the morning can be very frustrating. Depending on the size of your OST, you might be waiting for hours for the scan to complete and your mailbox to be restored to its working state.

But what do the users generally get upset the most at? It’s that they feel helpless and can’t figure out how to fix their OST/PST. If it’s a frequently experienced problem, why is it not automatic? Vlad to the rescue.

First, you will now you’re in for a scanost journey when you get the following screen:

Microsoft Office Outlook Offline Folders

Errors have been detected in the file … Quit Outlook and all mail-enabled applications, and then use the Inbox repair tool (Scanost.exe) to diagnose and repair errors in the file. For more information about the Inbox repair tool, see Help.

 

The complaint is that there is no link to Scanpst.exe. Doing a file search on Vista also turns nothing up. Psst, here is a little secret:

On Vista x64:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Office\Office12\SCANpst.exe

On Vista x32:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\SCANpst.exe

Here is the thing. Before you close out Outlook it will prompt you to locate your set of folders. You can either write down the file location in the error notification above, or you can just go to the next screen “Offline Folder File Settings” and copy the contents of the File section.

On a default Vista system, my OST is:

C:\Users\Vlad\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Outlook\outlook.ost

Obviously replace Vlad with whatever your username is. Now, start Scanpst.exe, select your mailbox and let it work.

Youtube….

 

This may be a great time to catch up on that Star Wars trilogy you’ve been meaning to watch off Youtube because this process will take forever. Or, if you’re lucky enough to have Exchange 2007 it’s time to fall in love with Outlook Web Access 2007.

Exchange 2007 features a built in POP3 server but by default it is off and will not accept plain text connections. Good luck telling that to a difficult customer who wants to send his password in clear text over the Internet just because the Apple store told him so.

By default, going to port 110 and trying pain text user/pass dialog will yield the following error:

“-ERR Command is not valid in this state”

To enable plain text login drop down to PowerShell and issue the following command:

Set-PopSettings -LoginType PlainTextLogin

Then make sure to restart Microsoft Exchange POP3 service:

Restart-Service -service msExchangePOP3

As far as how to enable POP3 service on Exchange 2007, here is some more PowerShell magic:

Set-service msExchangePOP3 -startuptype automatic

Start-service -service msExchangePOP3

This one is for my buddy Seth who waited for months for the message limits to be lifted. For those of you interested, here is where they are changed in SP1:

Organization Configuration > Hub Transport > Global Settings > Transport Settings:

Wham, bam, ticket closed.

Check your mail server configuration and make sure you aren’t trying to query the ORDB (Open Relay Database RBL) that went offline two years ago.

I’m sitting here in the OWN Atomic Tangerine room filling out some livestock export forms for Australia and UK and the usually light phone has been lit up with customers complaining about ORDB connections. These disappeared two years ago, if you’re seeing the rejections with that label you need to get back on the ball

Every now and then time-dependant rule questions come up and today I took a few minutes to figure them out. The good news is, Exchange 2007 transport rules make this easy and seamless. The bad news is, Outlook 2007 can do this too but only as a client-based rules. This means that without Exchange 2007, time-dependant rules can fire only if an instance of Outlook 2007 is running.

Corey Powell asks:

I have a customer with 6 sales people.  They have leads arriving via email to one email address.  They want the “on-call” person to receive all of the leads that come in for the period of time that that person is “on-call”.

So, how do you do this in Outlook 2007? Easy:

Click on Tools > Rules and Alerts > New > Check messages when they arrive > with specific words in the message header:
” 07:”
” 08:”
” 09:”
” 10:”

Forward it to people or distribution list and pick a user.

This will effectively forward messages received from 7:00 am - 10:59 am to the user or distribution list you specify. Repeat for the other 6 shifts with respective 4 hour windows.

Few notes: leading space is very important because some MTA’s use IPv6 which without a leading space can match the wrong part of the header. Furthermore, Outlook does not have the “and” operator (something that Exchange 2007 does in its transport rules stack) so if you receive mail from other time zones your filter may not work as intended.

Courtesy of PC World, Apple today announced that 1.1.5 will ship with Exchange ActiveSync functionality which will, for all intents and purposes, make iPhone “business capable,” more:

Enterprises want great push e-mail–”huge request.” And push calendar information. And push contacts. And a global address list. And Cisco IPsec VPN, and a variety of security-related options. And automated configration options, and remote data wiping just in case the phone is lost or stolen.

“I’m really excited to be the one telling you today we’re doing all these things in the next release of the iPhone software.” Applause.

Back to push. Customers have asked for built-in Microsoft Exchange information. Apple has licensed the ActiveSync technology needed from Microsoft to support Exchange.

Schiller explains how old-school push is complicated and unreliable, then says that ActiveSync is modern, simple, and reliable. iPhone apps like its e-mail and calendar will support it.

He walks over to a podium to demo all this. His phone has no contacts, no events, and no e-mail. But the screen for adding e-mail has a new option: Exhchange. He’s skipping that, but is turning on an Exchange account he had pre-configured. He wants to use ActiveSync for contacts, calendars, and e-mail. He turns them on. “And that’s it.”

His contacts show up, as do his appointments and his e-mail. Apple’s Bob Borchers is in the audience on Wi-Fi helping Schiller with a demo. Schiller creates a new contact, and Borcher confirms that it was instantly synched via Exchange and has shown up on his device.

Next, Schiller goes to mail. Borchers sends him an e-mail. And there it is on Schiller’s phone. Applause. “This is exactly what enterprise customers have asked for.”

Schiller’s looking at his calendar. He asks Borchers to move a meeting up, and the schedule change shows up on Schiller’s iPhone. “All that is happening live.”

Schiller says the last part of the demo is the most fun. He’s saying that maybe he’s lost his iPhone. He asks Borcher to wipe the phone remotely. He does, and Schiller’s phone loses all his data. Applause.

Also interesting is the quote on sales. iPhone is now the second most deployed smartphone (28% market share), second only to Blackberry. I am not sure if Windows Mobile devices are counted under a single brand, or if Samsung Blackjack and AT&T Tilt are two completely different smartphone brands. However you define it, nearly a third of the smartphones on the market now supports Exchange along with its push email and remote wipe. That is… significant.