Yes Virginia, there is an Exchange Server 2010 SP1
Published Apr 07 2010 09:00 AM 23.1K Views

While we appreciate all the positive feedback we've received on Exchange Server 2010, we know you all are eager to find out what's been going on in Redmond since November. Today, we are happy to give you a first look at what's coming later this year in Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1).

SP1 will include fixes and tweaks in areas you've helped us identify, including a roll-up of the roll-ups we've released to date. I also wanted to flag some of the feature enhancements we're excited to bring to you with SP1 including: archiving and discovery enhancements, Outlook Web App (OWA) improvements, mobile user and management improvements, and some highly sought after additional UI for management tasks. This is not an all-inclusive list, so stay tuned for the detailed list coming soon!

In addition to sharing these details with you, I'm pleased to let you know that we'll be offering a beta of SP1 for download in parallel with TechEd North America this June. This will give you a chance to test drive SP1 and prepare for its official release.

Archiving and Discovery Enhancements

With the release of Exchange Server 2010 last November, we introduced integrated archiving capabilities aimed at helping you preserve and discover e-mail data. In SP1, we've enhanced this archiving functionality based on the great feedback you've given us since our launch. This includes adding the flexibility to provision a user's Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox. This means your organization can now more easily implement separate storage strategies (or tiered storage) for less frequently accessed e-mail. And, we didn't just stop there! We've also added new server side capabilities so you can import historical e-mail data from .PST files, directly into Exchange, as well as IT pro controls to enable delegate access to a user's Personal Archive.

To help streamline the implementation of retention policies, SP1 updates the Exchange Management Console with new tools to create Retention Policy Tags, so you can automate the deletion and archiving of e-mail and other Exchange items. New optional Retention Policy Tags give you even more flexibility in defining your organizations retention management strategy.

Lastly, we've made several improvements to the Multi-Mailbox Search features, which can be used to conduct e-Discovery of e-mail for legal, regulatory or other reasons. A new search preview helps with, for example, early case assessment by providing you an estimate on the number of items in the result set-with keyword statistics-before e-mail located in the search are copied to the designated discovery mailbox. And, you now have a new search result de-duplication option, that when checked, only copies one instance of a message to the discovery mailbox. This can help you reduce the amount of e-mail you need to review following the search. Finally, added support for annotation of reviewed items means you can make your e-Discovery workflow even more efficient and less time consuming or costly.

For those of you that have been holding your breath for this one, we're also happy to let you know that in SP1 timeframe, there will be an update which will enable us to support access to a user's Personal Archive with Outlook 2007.

Watch the embedded video to hear from the Exchange team's Ann Vu and Ian Hameroff talk about the investments we've made around archiving in Exchange 2010.

Learn more about our approach to archiving by reading the Archiving with Exchange 2010 whitepaper.

Outlook Web App - Better Than Ever

We didn't stop working with archiving and discovery, OWA gets a significant facelift with SP1 as well. With new work to pre-fetch message content, the OWA reading experience becomes faster. With delete, mark as read, and categorize operations running asynchronously, these actions feel instantaneous to the user. We've also made sure that certain long running operations, such as attaching a very large file, will not block the rest of the OWA experience, protecting the user from irritating web UI hang-ups. You'll see a number of other UI improvements as well to de-clutter a bit; helping make it easier to find common tasks with updated action icons and menus. The simpler UI will make OWA much friendlier to the smaller screens of ever popular Netbooks. Users will also be able to share their calendars to anonymous viewers via the web, assuming you enable this functionality as the admin.

In RTM, we delivered Information Rights Management (IRM) capabilities in OWA, allowing you to read and compose IRM-protected messages just like you've been able to do with Outlook in the past. In SP1, you'll be able to add Web-Ready Document Viewing of IRM-protected documents as well and you'll be able to do so in Safari on a Mac as well as in Firefox or IE on a PC.

Finally, for those of you who have been dying to change the look and feel of OWA, we're bringing OWA themes back; adding several OWA themes so you can match the OWA experience to your particular style. Oh yeah, and yes, the reading pane can be placed on the bottom or the right side.

All The Mobility, All the Time

While Exchange Active Sync (EAS) has become the de facto standard for mobile communication, there is no resting on any laurels in Redmond here either. In SP1, mobile users will be treated with tether-free IRM support in EAS, enabling you to send and receive IRM-protected mail without having previously connected your device to Windows Mobile Device Center to provision IRM. Updated EAS capabilities also enable support for send-as, support for notifying the user if their device has been placed on block or quarantine by their admin, full implementation of conversation view including the ability to sync only unique parts of messages. Also, for those users who need help setting up their mobile device to access mail via POP/IMAP/SMTP, we've added information in OWA to provide them the server names for these services. For those of you who haven't already seen Michael Higashi's blog post from March, take a look to read about all the updated Outlook Mobile capabilities already delivered.

New Management UI

We know you all love PowerShell, as do we, but SP1 will bring several new management UI enhancements to enable a number of management tasks in the Exchange Management Console (EMC) and Exchange Control Panel (ECP). Here's a taste:

  • Create/configure Retention Tags + Retention Policies in EMC
  • Configure Transport Rules in ECP
  • Configure Journal Rules in ECP
  • Configure MailTips in ECP
  • Provision and configure the Personal Archive in ECP
  • Configure Litigation Hold in ECP & EMC
  • Configure Allow/Block/Quarantine mobile device policies in ECP
  • RBAC role management in ECP
  • Configure Database Availability Group (DAG) IP Addresses and Alternate Witness Server in EMC
  • Recursive public folder settings management (including permissions) in EMC

Many of the improvements we are delivering in the SP1 are in direct response to the feedback you've provided since RTM. I am excited about how, in a very short period time, we've been able to quickly respond and introduce these improvements and innovation to Exchange 2010. A full list of what's coming in SP1 will be on TechNet soon.

As always, let us know what you think!

-- Michael Atalla

96 Comments
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Finally.  These are the changes we have been looking for.  Anyway we can look for an update to Exchange 2007 for the time being for public folder permissions in the EMC?  Been using PFDAVAdmin since it's quicker for me.  Looks like I won't have a need for the new ExFolders much once you get public folder permissions in the EMC.

Archive mailbox changes are nice as well...now that as SATA disks written all over it for our archive mailboxes.

SP1 is what Exchange 2010 should have been out of the box from the sounds of it.  Must like Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been.

Am I starting to get the impression that Microsoft is listening to us customers more and more the year or two?!
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"SP1 is what Exchange 2010 should have been out of the box from the sounds of it.  Must like Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been."

QFT, but at least it's getting there!
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Yes, I third that. It's nice of you to bring back those nice features we miss. :-)

Seriously though, that's much of what I hoped for, so thanks.
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Thank you so much for finally making this information public!  It has been really hard designing solutions for customers that want archives but have not been able to offer more information about what will be supported in June.

Specifically, I will have a lot of very happy customers that archive mailboxes will be accessible from Outlook 2007.
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I don't know if it is there, but is it possible to set a standard e-mail signature for everybody using a standard Management UI?
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My customer will be doing backflips for being able to provision Personal Archives to a different mailbox database and being able to access them from Outlook 2007!

The next of drinks are on me!

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@Mantvydas: It's included - using transport rules (disclaimer action). You can create personalized signatures by using/inserting AD attributes in disclaimer text.


Understanding Disclaimers


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I second Mr.t's comments.  I can't wait!
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The archiving improvements are great!  Maybe I can finally kick Enterprise Vault to the curb!
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This addresses at least 80% of the issues we've experienced so far in our Exchange 2010 deployment.  We went live the day the product RTM'd and have reaped the benefits so far.  Cannot wait for this update to be RTM'd!
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Would it be too much to ask for one more EMC feature:

-- Ability to add user to Group from User Properties > Member Of tab.

Why this hasn't been done already seems like a huge oversight.
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Anything new with S/MIME?  Can it please be made to work with the other browsers supporting the full OWA experience?  Supporting Firefox on Linux would be ideal.  This impacts many Government customers.
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I am really liking the improvements.  Does Exchange 2010 support legal holds for public folders?
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that is more that what I have expected, one request are there any news about address list segregation
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When are we going to see 'time of day' transport rules?  I was hoping SP1 would finally bring them :(

I guess I'll be waiting for SP2 or god forbid Exchange 2012!
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I second about adding and removing users from groups on the member of tab in the EMC for a mailbox user.
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@Ralph Romanelli: No, Litigation Hold (formerly Legal Hold) is only supported for mailboxes.
@rdmtech: 'Time of day' transport rules are easy to accomplish - just schedule a script to enable/disable rules as required using Windows Scheduler. :)
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Pingback from:
http://blog.chrislehr.com/2010/04/exchange-2010-sp1-announced.htm

Congrats..  I am hoping there are not any store changes that will impact or delay third party vendors from offering backup support.

How about resetting passwords and creating new mailboxes from the ECP?  
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Will SP1 modify the AD Schema? There will add new EMC functionality?

Regards

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Any chance that the Direct File Access option would be added back into OWA with SP1, users miss that integration to be able to see files on the servers remotely tied into OWA?
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Everything sounds great, BUT what is the plan/schedule for releasing rollups for bug fixes.  We have an outstanding issue that Support is saying will be addressed in SP1, which is 5 months? away from release.  

The new stuff is great, but the stuff that is broken needs to be fixed in a more timely manner.
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Waiting for this beta.
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Any information available if SP1 brings back UDP notifications for Outlook 2003 clients in Online Mode?
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What's about setting rights (share folders, contacts, calander) in OWA
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Another David - Depending on the issue, it may be backportable to RTM and thus deliverable in an RTM rollup.  have your support person initiate an escalation request to Sustained Engineering where it will be triaged and determined if the issue resolution can indeed be backported.

Ross
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Great work on SP1, Well done !
still waiting for:

*Ability to add user to Group from User Properties > Member Of tab.
*Readonly Archive
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Anything new on Sharepoint 2010 integration?
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Pingback From:
http://get-mailbox.org/2010/04/exchange-2010-sp1-hakkinda-ilk-bilgiler/

Great Work on SP1!
thanks for the Archive mailbox changes . :)


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Can't wait - finally - theme support back in OWA!
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Indeed, great news. I second the question about address list / public folder segregation. I have been following Dave G's blog, but no good news as of late.
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Thanks for sharing this information - I was waiting for the possibility of archiving to differnt databases.

One Question:

... provision a user's Personal Archive to a different mailbox database from their primary mailbox

Includes this that one can have the "different datebase" on a different server?

And one completly differnt thing I am missing in the SP: Couldn't Microsoft include a possibility to see in Outlook who is in a query-based distribution group?

Thank you.
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Any news about a bug with eseutil /p. (2008 R2)

I'm experiencing difficulties with this tool. My request reaches the support level 3 in Microsoft...
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Nice to here that Exchange server 2010 is going to release service pack 1.

Facing lot of issue.

Thanks...
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Thank you. Exchange 2010 vanilla was a huge move forward and I could see where MS were going with archiving. I was expecting a different behaviour on the archive element but realistically expected that to be in the next release of Exchange. Having it so soon and as a service pack is just awesome. Great job
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Can't come quick enough.  BUT please please please bring back UDP notifications for our online Outlook 2003 users - they are going nuts!

Thanks!
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Can we access to archive folders if outlook is not connected to Exchange (in offline)?
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When "later this year"?
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updates to language packs too ? missing voice mail preview for german language as an example
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It will be nice if microsoft adds "Mailbox size", "last logon time", and "last logged on by" columns to the available add/remove columns options in the Exchange Management console-It was there with the 2003 ESM, and lost it with 2007... now we have to run get-malboxstatistics cmdlet to get this information...
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I thought that the hosting solution was supposed to be part of the first service pack? With the death of HMC we have not been able to move to Exchange 2010.
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@Gordon - I am not sure which government you work for but speaking as a person working in the civilian federal government, the standard desktop is Windows. I know of no government agencies that have standardized on Linux as the desktop - maybe some techies use it, but joe average user doesn't.
New mail notifications for Outlook 2003 would be huge.
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Hi Sean – we are working diligently on our commitment to the hosting community and will update our partners on the status of this work at the upcoming Hosting Summit.  There have been no changes to the plans we have previously communicated.  This blog is in regards to the capabilities included in Service Pack 1 for on-premises Exchange customers and is in that way distinct from what we will deliver to our hosting partners.

-- Michael Atalla

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Great news (especially about the archiving), thanks guys!
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Hi, will it be possible to retain all sent/recieved e-mail in the e-mail archive and make it read only?  If not does Microsoft have plans to implement something like this?
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Any information available for which features will requre the Enterprise CAL?
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Two questions - 1; Is there a schema update required for this? and 2; is there a beta release available?
Thanks
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Why multiple mailboxes for archiving?

Why not the users single mailbox with rules which classify the data contained therein?

For example:
Primary Database
Archive Database

Users Mailbox
Archive policy = Any mail older than 2008 put in the archive database.

In this way from the users perspective it is always their single mailbox from the servers / systems perspective the data is automatically housed in the secondary database/storage structures.

Simple, clean, efficient and most importantly nothing changes for either the user or the administrator (other than configuration)....

George
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Hope Web Part URL formats come back in SP1 to access Outlook Web Access web parts contents directly like Exchange 2003 and 2007 BUT GONE IN EXCHANGE 2010.


<iframe id="kalender" name="kalender" src="http://webmail/OWA/xxx@dk/?cmd=contents&module=calendar&view=weekly" width=100% height=100%>


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What about multiple mailboxes from the same organization in OWA?

What about multiple exchange accounts using EAS from different organizations in OWA?

That would be very useful
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Will SP1 fix the possible bug with certificate revocation??

We are trying to implement Exchange 2010 and have hit a brick wall.
MS support call open too.

Any help, would be greatly appreciated:

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en/exchange2010/thread/299c8ebe-223c-43ab-8cbc-c822199181...
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