Announcing Exchange Server 2016 Preview!
We’re excited to announce that Exchange Server 2016 Preview is now available for download. At Ignite, we introduced Exchange Server 2016 and demonstrated some of its capabilities. Now you can install the bits yourself and get hands-on experience with the newest member of the Exchange family. We’re eager to hear your feedback as we progress toward a final release later this year. This version of Exchange is special because it was born in the cloud. From the depths of the mailbox store to the most visible parts of the Outlook web UI, the bits that make up Exchange 2016 are already in use across millions of mailboxes in Office 365. For the past several months we’ve been working to package up these capabilities and deliver them on-premises. This preview milestone is an important step in that process, and we’re excited to include the worldwide Exchange community in the journey. Let’s begin by joining Greg Taylor and Jeremy Chapman for an episode of Office Mechanics that takes a closer look at what’s new in Exchange 2016, with a focus on IT-related features. Here’s a sampling of some key improvements that you can explore as you try out this Preview release. All of these enhancements are driven by our experience running Exchange at scale in a highly available way in Office 365. We believe it is vital to bring innovation from our datacenter to yours. Simplified architecture The architecture of Exchange 2016 is an evolution of what was delivered in Exchange 2013, reflecting the best practices of the Exchange Preferred Architecture, and mirroring the way we deploy Exchange in Office 365. The Client Access and Mailbox server roles have been combined, providing a standard building block for building your Exchange environment. Coexistence with Exchange 2013 is simplified, and namespace planning is easier. Improved reliability Keeping email up and running is a high-visibility responsibility for IT, so we’ve made investments that help you run Exchange with greater reliability and less effort. Based on Office 365 learnings, we’ve already shipped hundreds of reliability and performance fixes and enhancements to Exchange 2013 customers via Cumulative Updates. Exchange 2016 includes all of those enhancements, of course, but it goes further. Failovers in Exchange 2016 are 33 percent faster than Exchange Server 2013 due to the ability to read from the passive copy of the database. We’ve turned on Replay Lag Manager by default, which automatically plays down replication logs when insufficient database copies are available. We’re building on previous investments in automated repair, adding database divergence detection to help proactively detect instances of database corruption so you can remediate them well before anyone notices a hiccup. To make operation of Exchange simpler, we introduced Get-MailboxServerRedundancy, a new PowerShell cmdlet that helps you prioritize hardware repairs and makes upgrades easier. New Outlook web experience As part of our continuing effort to provide users with a first class web experience, we’ve made significant updates to Outlook Web App, which will be known as “Outlook on the web” going forward. New features include: Sweep, Pin, Undo, inline reply, ability to propose new time for meeting invites, a new single-line inbox view, improved HTML rendering, better formatting controls, ability to paste inline images, new themes, and emojis, to name a few. We’ve also made numerous performance improvements and enhanced the mobile browse experience on phones and tablets. Greater extensibility The Add-In model for Outlook and Outlook on the web, which allows developers to build features right into the user's Outlook experience, continues to get more and more robust. Add-ins can now integrate with UI components in new ways: as highlighted text in the body of a message or meeting, in the right-hand task pane when composing or reading a message or meeting, and as a button or a dropdown option in the Outlook ribbon. Built-in Add-Ins such as My Templates get a user interface makeover. We’ve also introduced new ways of rolling out apps to users, including side-loading of app with a user-to-user sharing model and made it possible for users to install apps directly from the Office store or the Outlook ribbon. Additionally we have added richer JavaScript APIs for attachment handling, text selection, and much more. Note: Exchange Server 2016 does not support connectivity via the MAPI/CDO library. Third-party products (and custom in-house developed solutions) need to move to Exchange Web Services (EWS) or EAS. Faster and more intuitive search As the quantity of email in people’s inboxes continues to grow, it’s essential for them to search through all that email in faster and easier ways. By studying real-world data about how people search and analyzing the speed at which results are returned, we’ve implemented changes to the search architecture and user interface of Office 365, which are now coming on-premises. The overall speed of server side search is significantly improved in Exchange 2016. But more importantly, the Outlook client now fully benefits from the power of server-side search. When a cached mode Outlook 2016 client is connected to Exchange, it performs search queries using the speed and robust index of the server, delivering faster and more complete results than desktop search. We’ve also implemented a new, more intuitive search UI in Outlook 2016 and Outlook on the web. As you type, intuitive search suggestions appear, based on people you communicate with, your mailbox content and your query history. In Outlook on the web, search refiners appear next to the search result set, helping users quickly hone in on exactly what they are looking for within results. And with calendar search, now you can search for events in your calendar and other people’s calendar. Enhanced Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Exchange 2013 included built-in DLP capabilities that help protect sensitive information from falling into the wrong hands, and these capabilities are being extended in Exchange 2016. We are adding 30 new sensitive information types to Exchange, including data types common in South America, Asia, and Europe. We are also updating several existing sensitive data types for improved accuracy. In addition to enhancing these built-in capabilities, we now enable you to configure DLP and transport rules to trigger when content has been classified by a third-party classification system. You can also configure custom email notifications that are sent to recipients when messages sent to them are impacted by your rules. Faster and more scalable eDiscovery We’ve made eDiscovery search faster and more reliable by overhauling the search architecture to make it asynchronous and distributing the work across multiple servers with better fault tolerance. This means that we can return results more reliably and faster. Search scalability through the UI is also improved, and an unlimited number of mailboxes can be searched via cmdlet. You also asked for ability to perform eDiscovery searches on public folder content and place the data in public folders on hold to enable long-term archiving, so we’ve added those capabilities in this release. Auto-expanding archives To accommodate users who store extremely large amounts of data, Exchange 2016 now automatically provisions auxiliary archive mailboxes when the size of a user’s archive mailbox reaches 100 GB. Thereafter, additional auxiliary archives are automatically provisioned in 50 GB increments. This collection of archive mailboxes appears as a single archive to the user as well as to administrators, accommodating rapid growth of archive data from PST file imports or other intensive use. Hybrid improvements Hybrid capabilities allow you to extend your Exchange deployment to the cloud, for example to enable a smooth transition or accommodate mergers and acquisitions. We’re making the hybrid configuration wizard cloud-based, which makes it easier for us to keep it up to date with changes in Office 365. Hybrid scenarios also enable you to leave all user mailboxes on-premises, while benefitting from cloud services that enhance your deployment – services like Exchange Online Protection; Exchange Online Archiving; Azure Rights Management; Office 365 Message Encryption, and cloud-based Data Loss Prevention. We recently added the Advanced Threat Protection security services to this list, and Equivio analytics for eDiscovery is next up in the queue. More to come That’s a quick look at some of the improvements that are part of Exchange Server 2016 Preview. Between preview and final release we’ll add additional features, such as updates to auditing architecture and audit log search. After SharePoint Server 2016 and the Office Web App Server ship their beta versions, you’ll also be able to try out new document collaboration features that help people work with attachments in smarter ways. How to get started There is still much to do between now and launch, but we’re excited to put this Preview in your hands. Remember that the Preview can only be used in non-production deployments, unless you are a member of our Technology Adoption Program (TAP). The Preview supports co-existence with Exchange Server 2010 SP3 RU10 and 2013 CU9, for non-production testing. For complete details about the Preview, check out the initial product documentation on the TechNet Exchange Server 2016 library. We’re excited to hear from you as you try out this release! The Exchange TeamExchange On-Premises TAP Program accepting nominations
We are excited to re-announce that the Exchange On-Premises TAP Program is accepting nominations! The purpose of this post is to provide you with the opportunity to nominate your company for the Exchange On-Premises Technology Adoption Program (TAP) Program. Joining the Exchange On-Premises TAP Program provides companies with a number of advantages, such as providing input and feedback for future releases, developing a close relationship with the Exchange Product Team; receiving Pre-Release information about Exchange, and more. Exchange On-Premises TAP Program Overview The Exchange On-Premises TAP Program is designed to validate the next version of Exchange Server by having customers test deployments of Pre-Release builds of Exchange in their own production environment. This gives participants the opportunity to provide feedback to the Exchange product development team. Customers in the TAP Program are provided free support from Microsoft Customer Services and Support (CSS) for issues encountered with Exchange. Additional information on the TAP Program is discussed in this blog entry from a number of years ago, which is still quite relevant today. What's in it for TAP Program customers? A close relationship with the Exchange product team. An opportunity to provide feedback on future releases of Exchange directly to the product team. Technical conference calls with members of the product team. Production grade Pre-Release builds of Exchange Server. Access to free CSS Support for Exchange issues for the duration of the Exchange TAP Program (CSS support is 24/7 for any critical issues found in production). A head start in the next deployment cycle, taking advantage of new and enhanced features available in the next version of Exchange Server. What do I have to commit to in order to participate in the Exchange TAP Program? Jump through a few legal hoops (signing some legal documents such as an NDA). Go through a few steps that will help assure easy communication between you and Microsoft (details will be provided when applicable) Deploy Pre-Release versions of Exchange Server in your production environment. Commit to timely response of surveys and feedback requests from Microsoft. Commit to providing resources for TAP Program activities for the duration of the program – people/time as well as machines needed for testing and production, and associated operating system software licenses. Provide us with deployment plans, including details of network topologies and additional reports, as applicable. (Required before we can give production approval for the Pre-Release code.) What makes a good TAP Program candidate? Willing to dedicate the resources (people/time and machines) to testing Pre-Release builds of Exchange in production. We find that we get some of our best feedback through production deployments, and so we will prioritize nominations from customers willing to be aggressive in their production rollouts higher. Responsive to our requests for feedback, including responding to surveys and attending conference calls and participating in a distribution list. Gives constructive criticism with context – don't just stop at "I don’t like feature X," provide us more information like "Here's why feature X won’t work for my Exchange environment, and here's why I think doing it another way would be better." Gives feedback even when not requested. We may not have sent out a survey or had a call about a topic, but if something about the product is problematic for you– or you love it! :-) – we want to know. Summary If you feel your Company fits what we are looking for, you can nominate yourself by sending email to: Davidesp@microsoft.com Please place “TAP Customer Nomination” in the subject line. Also please gave the following info; Legal company name Size in terms of number of mailboxes in your org Versions of Exchange you are currently running Name of a contact person we can speak to with email address Reason for interest in our program Note: This is for our business customers to self-nominate for inclusion in future Exchange Pre-Release programs. If you are a Microsoft representative and would like to nominate a customer you are working with, please contact us directly and we will provide appropriate guidance. All nominations, internal and external, are reviewed and screened prior to acceptance into a program. No customers are allowed access to any Pre-Release downloads or information until all legal paperwork is properly executed. Nomination does not mean acceptance… not all nominees will be chosen for a program. Thank you! David Espinoza Senior Program Manager, Customer Experience TeamADModify.NET is here!
A quick intro to ADModify: ADModify is a tool that was (and is still) developed and maintaned out of our Support Services (aka PSS) team, and was created to make it easier to modify / import / export objects in Active Directory in bulk. The tool has been available on the FTP site for download for a while, but with recent release of new version (ADModify.NET or v2.0) - we have decided to create a gotdotnet workspace for it too to make it easier for you to give us feedback on it :) So - recently, Marc and I have released ADModify.NET. ADModify.NET (v2.0) was written from the ground up using Visual C# .NET 2003. When benchmarked against its predecessor, it made the same modifications in less than half the time. Its new feature set allows administrators to bulk modify any AD attribute from any AD partition with almost limitless flexibility. Administrators will also find that they are no longer restricted by the attributes hard coded into the tool, as ADModify now contains the ability to modify any attribute just simply given its name and value. ADModify is also no longer restricted to literal values; it is now possible to dynamically build values based off of current AD attributes. Logging and Error handling has also improved dramatically. All logging is now done using XML, making it much easier for administrators to manipulate and store the data and even take advantage of features such as Undo. Keeping with the Windows 2003 initiative that everything that can be done in the GUI should be available via command line, a command line version of the tool that contains all of the same features is included as well. It is worth noting that ADModify.NET requires the .NET Framework. It also is worth noting that it will not run across a network drive. Here is the download point: http://www.codeplex.com/admodify The rest of this blog covers the major new features that are available in ADModify.NET over the old version ADModify 1.6. Terminal Server Attributes It is now possible to modify Terminal Server attributes using ADModify.NET. All TS attributes that are available in the Windows 2003 Active Directory Users and Computers users property page are available. ADModify utilizes the TSUserExLib Library, so Windows 2003 or later is required to make Terminal Server setting modifications. You do not have to be running a Windows 2003 domain; you will just simply need to run the program from a Windows 2003 Server for this specific functionality. Mailbox Rights Mailbox Rights are also now available for bulk modification. There are 4 options when dealing with mailbox rights: - Dump Mailbox Rights - Import Mailbox Rights - Bulk Add a User to Mailbox Rights - Bulk Remove a User From Mailbox Rights Since CDOEXM is utilized, Exchange 2000 or later ESM must be installed on the machine that ADModify.NET is run on to be supported. Dump Mailbox Rights This option will export all of the ACE's in a users mailbox rights to an XML file, separated by inherited and non-inherited rights. This file can be used as a way for administrators to track mailbox rights and can also be used to import. Undo is not supported when using this option, as it is a read only operation. Import Mailbox Rights As long as a valid export of mailbox rights has been completed, the Import Mailbox Rights option can be used to import them. All that is required is a valid mbxrights.xml file. Undo is also not supported here. Bulk Add a User to Mailbox Rights With this option it is possible to add a user with specific rights to multiple mailboxes at the same time. For example, you could grant the user DOM\user1 Full Mailbox Access to a specific subset of users with relative ease. Undo for this operation is supported. Bulk Remove a User From Mailbox Rights Same as the Bulk Add option except this option will remove the specified user from mailbox rights. Undo for this operation is supported. Name that attribute! Possibly the most robust new feature of ADModify is the flexibility to simply name the attribute you wish to modify. Any attribute that contains a string, Boolean (true/false), or integer value can be modified in this fashion (attributes that contain data types such as SIDs and Long Integer are not supported). In here, simply fill in the attribute name and value. For multivalued operations, be sure to choose append or remove. The reason is simply this: if you modify a multivalued attribute and do not choose the multivalued option, the attribute will be overwritten with the new value, not appended. Using Variables Administrators are no longer restricted to using literal values when bulk modifying users. ADModify now supports the use of variables. What are variables? They simply allow you build a value for an attribute based off of one or more current attributes. The syntax is simple. Simply enclose the value in single ticks (') to treat it as a variable. If you wish to build an attribute using both variables and literal values, just remember that variables need to be separated from literal values using the percent sign (%). You can also take the first x number of characters from an attribute and use that as well. Example: Syntax for using the description attribute as your value: 'description' Syntax for using two attributes, givenName and sn (separated by a space): %'givenName'% %'sn'% Syntax for using multiple attributes and literal values: h:\homefolders\%'sAMAccountName'%\%'givenName'%\ Syntax for taking the first character of an attribute: %1'givenName'%.%'sn'%@microsoft.com If the need should arise to actually use the % or ' characters in an attribute value, simply use a preceding forward slash as an escape character. You can mix variables with literal values, even the % and ' characters as long as the correct syntax is used. Example: To assign the value "This is a percent sign: %", use this: This is a percent sign: /% To assign the value "My username is 'username' " (where username is the sAMAccountName), use this: My username is /'%'sAMAccountName'%/' Undo Feature Administrators need no longer fear making massive bulk updates to AD Users. With the exception of the "Remove Exchange Attributes" and "Import Mailbox Rights" options, every modification is undo-able. All modifications are written to a log file named after the current date and time, in MMDDYYYYHHMMSS.xml format. All modifications will not only log the new value, but the user’s previous value. As long as the log file is in tact, ADModify.NET can parse it and undo the changes that were previously done. In addition to the changes that were made being logged to the XML file, there is also an undo.log file. This file contains all users processed by undo and logs skipped users, the reason for the user being skipped, and a summary of changes. Command Line syntax: admodcmd -undo filename.xml admodcmd - ADModify.NET in Command Line admodcmd.exe is a fully functional command line version of ADModify.NET. Syntax can be obtained using admodcmd -?. However, below you will find some examples for common administrative tasks. 1. Adding a secondary SMTP address of firstinitial.lastname@company.com admodcmd -dn OU= MyOU , DC =domain,DC=com -addsmtp %1'givenName'%.%'sn'%@company.com 2. Name the attribute you wish to modify Modify the description field to contain the value "My legacyExchangeDN is (legacyExchangeDN)", where (legacyExchangeDN) is the users legacyExchangeDN: admodcmd -dn OU= MyOU , DC =domain,DC=com -custom description "My legacyExchangeDN is %'legacyExchangeDN'%" 3. Modify the display name to read last name, first name admodcmd -dn OU= MyOU , DC =domain,DC=com -custom displayName "%'sn'%, %'givenName'%" 4. Modify the users Relative Distinguished Name (CN) from firstname lastname to lastname, firstname admodcmd -dn OU= MyOU , DC =domain,DC=com -modrdn "%'sn'%, %'givenName'%" These are just a few of the examples. For more sample usage on admodcmd, consult the ADModify.NET help. - Dan WinterOutlook 2013 profile might not update after mailbox is moved to Exchange 2013
Update 3/18/2014: The fix for this issue has been released and is a part of March 11 2014 update for Outlook 2013. Please see the following KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2863911. We wanted to make certain that Exchange admins are aware of an Outlook issue which may impact your plans to move to Exchange Server 2013. As discussed in KB:2934750, Outlook 2013 customers who deployed client updates released in November and December of last year may experience a profile migration error post mailbox migration. When this occurs, it might not be possible to use normal Profile Repair options to restore connectivity. Older versions of Outlook, including Outlook 2013 without the November and December updates will function normally. An Outlook update which resolves this issue is nearing completion and being worked with priority to be released as soon as possible. The Exchange team is working closely with the Outlook team to verify the fix. The Exchange TeamExchange Server: The Road Ahead
We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the release of Exchange Server 2013. This is traditionally the time when people start asking questions like: When is Service Pack 1 coming? What’s the timeline for the next Exchange Server release? What are you cooking up for the next version of Exchange? This time around, we’re also hearing a few customers ask: Will there be another version of Exchange Server? We hope the answer to that question is obvious, but we wanted to go on record to make sure no one is confused. Here are the facts: The Exchange engineering team is hard at work developing the next version of Exchange. We expect the next on-premises version to be released according to our traditional release cadence (2-3 years after the previous version). Microsoft has no plans to stop delivering on-premises releases of Exchange. It’s true that customers are shifting their Exchange deployments from on-premises to the cloud, and it’s true that we are investing heavily in Office 365. We’re fans of Office 365 because we’ve seen that when customers run email in our cloud, they save money, they get larger mailboxes, and they get faster access to our latest innovations. IT admins spend less time maintaining servers and more time lighting up features that make users happy. Running Office 365 also brings us real-world experience that helps us build a better on-premises product. While we are enthusiastic about the cloud, we also understand that our customers will transition to the cloud at their own pace. Many customers will remain on-premises or in hybrid deployments for the foreseeable future, and we want to keep delivering our newest and best features to them. Fortunately, our development process allows us to do that. We have a single code base that serves both cloud and on-premises customers, so we can deliver innovation to both groups. Our development strategy continues to focus on Office 365 as the initial platform where we roll out new features. This approach allows us to introduce and test new features at scale before including relevant functionality into on-premises updates. The benefits of the strategy can be seen in Exchange 2013, where features such as Managed Availability are directly based on work done to automate and improve our datacenter operations. If you want clues about what’s coming in the next version of Exchange Server, keep an eye on what’s happening in Office 365. It’s an exciting time for messaging and collaboration. Today’s technology trends— cloud, mobile devices, social computing, machine learning—all have the opportunity to make email more useful and powerful. We’ve got some great stuff cooking, and we’re committed to bringing innovation to all of our customers, whether they choose to deploy Exchange in the cloud or on-premises. The Exchange product team and our customers have a 17+ year history of successfully navigating changes in IT architecture and management together. We look forward to continuing that tradition with you. Perry Clarke Corporate Vice President Microsoft Exchange
