Open Source Server-Side Lite Holiday cmdlet for Exchange

Holidays in Exchange.

The words send shivers down my spine.

We got our first request for a tool to insert holidays server-side after we did a migration for the folks at HMS (shout out to you guys!) for Exchange 2003.  That was CDO-based tech, with its positives and negatives.

After Exchange 2007 came out we re-wrote the tool for Exchange Web Services  (EWS), added a variety of features and found that folks really wanted it, but not at enterprise licensing levels.  Go figure.

But it's a good way of showing what we can do with calendars in migrations, so we've produced an open-sourced lite version of a holiday cmdlet.

Sample code where we build the holiday looks like this:

So you can find the CodePlex project at sumatra.codeplex.com.

We've also hard-coded a few things (like, it's picking up your credentials to authenticate against Exchange, so you ARE the service account!).

We think of this more as a mini-tutorial on how to do a calendar-centric cmdlet.

Why a lite version and not the full thing?

Mainly because the full version has a lot of expertise behind it that we're reticent to just give to those of you toiling out there on software knock-offs.  

Where from here?

We are market-driven.  We're keeping an eye on what we hear back.

Server-side Holidays for Microsoft Exchange cmdlet

OK, we'll let you use the cmdlet for server-side holidays.

It works with Exchange 2007, 2010, and 2013, as well as Office 365.

You will have to set permissions to be able to access calendars.

You can download it here.  

Update December 10, 2013: Link removed while we consider alternates for the holiday cmdlet.
Update December 17, 2013:  We created an open-source cmdlet project on CodePlex.

Visual Representation of Calendaring in EHLO

You know, actions tell you a lot.

So just for chuckles we took this screen shot of the Tags on The Exchange Team Blog.

We see that to Microsoft calendaring gets slightly more tags than Compliance and Jobs (as in positions, not Steve).... 

....WAY fewer than Biography (what does the life cycle of a Microserf really have to do with Exchange?)....

.... And lower mention than whale dung to almost everything else.

Now this is not scientific, and it is not necessarily significant.  Tips 'n Tricks and Troubleshooting could be calendar-specific at times and not be cross-classified.  And E-Mail does not get a separate specific mention, which would provide the most direct comparison.

All we're measuring is the relative time it's tagged vis-a-vis the other tags.  Could be it's not mentioned because it's stable and not a problem (we find a lot of problems here, but that's out specialty), or it could be that other priorities are higher.

Preliminary video of #Oracle #Beehive to #Office365 Calendar Migration

We're back to normal functioning around here.

We did this preliminary video on how our Beehive calendaring / contacts / task migration into Exchange / Office 365 works.  

Look at it on full screen so you can catch all the details.
Updated July 18, 2013 to point to the final video.

Automatically Updating Domains / SMTP Addresses in #Lync Meetings in #Exchange

So for the last few months we've had an interesting tool running at a client site.

The initial motivation was a corporate re-organization where a group of users were  transferred into a new domain.  Being a communications-intensive environment this brought a number of issues with it.  One of them was how to update all their Lync meetings to the new domain automatically.

We built this into SuUNDO, one of our flexible utilities for modifying Exchange calendars (usually to clear stuff out).

You're going to need to do be issuing commands from PowerShell.  There is of course installation and configuration, which in the interests of brevity we cut out here.  The great thing about PowerShell is its scripting flexibility.

Let's take a look at a sample Lync meeting in Office 365.

If we just wanted to find out how many current meetings are in Zyg's calendar we could just do this:

#ReportONLY
get-StringsinNotes @LyncCmds -NewPrimarySMTPAddress: "zyg-furmaniuk@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" 

Output to the screen generates this (telling us this user has one current Lync meeting)

This is recorded in a log file as well.

So far so good -- this can tell us the extent of the number of online meetings that would need to change for all users.

Now, let's take the next step and update them.

Let's say this was an on-premises Exchange installation (it's not, but one of the Cloud's best attributes is as a test system) and we needed to modify just the domain names for these users, from "lync.com" to "sumatra.onmicrosoft.com"

This command will do it:

set-StringsinNotes @LyncCmds  -NewPrimarySMTPAddress: "zyg-furmaniuk@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" -OldPrimarySMTPAddress: "zyg-furmaniuk@sumatra.onmicrosoft.com" -OldSIPAddress: "lync.com" -NewSIPAddress: "sumatra.onmicrosoft.com"

And we see the results in the original calendar here:

And now for the magic part, it has been automatically updated in the ATTENDEES' calendars as well!

Of course, you could also use this for updating when users change SMTP addresses only (or both together!),

Preview: Oracle Beehive to Exchange 2010 Calendar Migration

We have Oracle Beehive to Exchange 2010 migration working pretty well in our lab and are about to release it to one of the few test sites we trust with these things.

We chose a different path on this new code.  Instead of going through an intermediary "extraction" step  we read directly from the Beehive Database and insert from there into Exchange 2010.

We still allow for individual mappings (so if Hillary Rodham in Beehive needs to become Hillary Clinton in Exchange we can handle that, or if you want to take this opportunity to recast your Conference Room nomenclature that is completely possible).

Of course, this is a FULL STATE migration so we preserve all of the recurrence patterns (and in this case we can preserve ALL of them), the Guest Lists, and the guest responses.  In short: meetings are completely "live" after migrating with this code.  It is like your users were on Exchange all along.

Just so you folks can get a glimpse of it:

And since one of Zyg's personal hot buttons is making sure international characters come out correctly, this hybrid German-Spanish text in Outlook on Beehive:

Migrates perfectly correctly to Office 365:

We're still working on some performance tuning -- but you can get a good idea of where this is all heading.

We're also considering migrating all the user preferences and email if we get strong enough demand.

Oracle Beehive Calendar to Exchange Migration

With three requests (two of which we consider serious) we're working on an Oracle Beehive to Microsoft Exchange migration path.

And we're going to leave all the data in your hands and simplify our usual process.
Want to get in on the ground floor?
Drop us a line.

SuHoliday cmdlet and Exchange 2007

We've gotten a few inquiries about running the SuHoliday cmdlet on Exchange 2007 instead of Exchange 2010.

Short answer: Yes you can do it.  Nothing the the was we use the EWS API is specific to Exchange 2010 to the exclusion of Exchange 2007.

However, setting Permissions in Exchange 2007 IS VERY different from Exchange 2010, so you will have to adjust for that.  Taking all of the Exchange 2007 permissions stuff out of the documentation made it substantially shorter and clearer,

If you need help look at posts in this blog involving Permissions and Exchange 2007.

Read "Freedom for Users, Not for Software"

We've been watching the migration to the cloud for a while now -- wondering when everybody was going to wise up that data centers were farming them into cruelty-free meat by-products.

I was recently at a Christmas party with some people from a Redmond-based software corporation that makes Exchange.  Their take: Office 365 made their lives and their customers lives much more convoluted.  Where they could work solutions in on-premises servers, any changes to Office 365 need to be escalated at the corporate level.  And we all know how convenient and easy that is.  So they're increasingly seeing combined Office 365 and on-premises Exchange environments, precisely the opposite of what they and the customer predicted or wanted.

SO it's is with great fervor that I suggest you read Freedom for Users, Not for Software by Benjamin Mako Hill.

He hits it right on the money with his analysis of the market confusion initially arising from "free software" which was re-cast as "open software" (goals with which it is hard to disagree! What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding?) and the way this term was used and abused in the industry.  The aspect that I suggest you pay closest attention to is the emphasis on users. Focused on the server-side of the client-server model, we at Sumatra would substitute the term "consumers" for "users" to avoid the further linguistic confusion that comes from the distinction between "users" and "administrators" in such environments.  Both the admin and the user are consumers, and the user-admin collective together face the "user" conundrum.

After years in this business, I'm pretty sure the dynamics of the industry are never going to allow the ideals of the open software movement to be fully realized in any software that is both marketable and useful.  The lure of dollars is too strong.  When software remained the exclusive domain of academics and cowboys it was possible.  These guys were happy to have a car and an apartment.

But once venture capital and the stock market took hold these ideals were not going to stand up to the motivation of owning a private jet and a McMansion.

What's this have to do with the movement to the cloud?  It's all the same dynamic based on much of the same software with the scions of the same corporations promising freedom while actually building feudal digital fiefdoms.  Do not go mindlessly with the flow when you hear that your support problems are going to go away and your life is going to be easier.  You might luck out, but really look at what your business goals are and how you're going  to deal with realistic software disaster scenarios while your business processes are directly under someone else's control.

As we often quote Ronald Reagan: "Trust, but verify."

Retiring Meeting Maker Migrations December 20, 2013

Folks, it has been a great evening out but now the bartender is calling for last orders.

As of December 20, 2013 we will no longer be doing Meeting Maker migrations.  We of course continue to do both full state and faster-simpler migrations from Oracle Calendar to Exchange, and faster-simpler migrations from Zimbra to Exchange.  Our Holiday cmdlet continues to thrive and our custom calendar engineering is unparalleled.

To those of you who have been asking us about migrating in the last few years: we'd recommend starting your test cycles sooner rather than later.

We're sympathetic to your budget cycles, so if you need to discuss timing we're open to that.  But we do need to put a stake in the ground so we can all move on.

Exchange 2010 Permissions Debugging Protocol updated

It being a new year and we having found a few new ways that Permissions could be problematic in Exchange, we've modified the Debugging Protocol.

The latest is available at this link: Exchange_2010_Permissions_Debugging_Protocol.pdf and supersedes all earlier versions.

Changes mainly affect the holiday cmdlet.

#Exchange #PowerShell cmdlet for server-side holiday insertion updated

We're happy to announce we've updated the trial version of our Microsoft Exchange cmdlet for inserting holidays server-side.  This works on Exchange 2010 and Office 365.

You can read about it and get a download link by going here and filling out a form (we want to keep track of who is using it).

You can read the documentation here (and this includes how to insert class schedules using the tool as well as how to use the web-based version we've done).

We have had tens of thousands of people using this version since last year, but only a handful actually made any donations to the project.  So we're setting up a payment mechanism for the non-trial version.  When that's ready we'll let you know.

Oracle Calendar / Zimbra to Microsoft Exchange faster/simpler trial.

We've been getting lots of requests for the simplified method of going into Exchange from Oracle Calendar System and Zimbra.  So you can just download the trial here.

This version is quicker and simpler than our full method, and it will work for you IF:

• You are not changing your base SMTP addresses for users in your migration
• You do not want your recurrence patterns re-created
• You have no need of re-mapping email addresses of a subset of your users 
• Your users can deal with responding to their invitations again

If you really want the full-state, map-able, recurrence pattern recreating version you'll still need to do a trial.

Holidays into #Exchange and #Office365 via Server-Side Tools

We've just upgraded our cmdlet for inserting holidays server-side into Exchange 2010.  We'll give you some more details about that in a later post.

Mainly we're writing because we've just completed a site that lets you upload holidays into Office 365 without the cmdlet.

The full URL is: http://www.sumatraresourcewatch.com/holiday

We're treating it as a beta right now -- but we want folks to try out the online experience since it's one of the easiest ways to actually see how the full cmdlet works.  The "Buy" button will not be active until next week or so.

We've tried to make the web interface as easy as possible.  Folks who have been through a migration with us will also recognize our 1930's Soviet tractor style of user interface (not pretty but it works -- if the market responds well to this we've already got plans to update it). And since we traditionally use Jimi Hendrix as a sample account we are announcing this shortly after after his birthday.

You will need credentials for a service account that has Impersonation permissions to any of the accounts you want to modify.  This will be no surprise to any Exchange administrators.  The full manual for the cmdlet goes over how to do this.  

Then you select if you want to insert into a single calendar or upload a list of calendars to insert.

And the default calendar list goes right into Jimi's calendar.

Note that you can also remove inserted holidays automatically but leaving all other calendar data intact.

The web-based version allows you to do select a list of SMTP addresses to insert at once.  In the unlicensed version we limit this to 25 users per day, and only allow you to select US or UK holidays that we have already defined.

The full cmdlet allows you a lot more functionality: multiple time zone support, script-ability, and LDAP query insertions.

For the record, US Federal Holidays came from http://www.opm.gov/operating_status_schedules/fedhol/2013.asp  Our default file will insert JUST THIS LIST (i.e., NO “Day after Thanksgiving”) and we left Veteran’s Day a ”Free” day rather than a Busy day,

UK bank holidays came from this list https://www.gov.uk/bank-holidays 

Beta sites wanted for injecting holidays into Hosted Exchange / Office 365

Wanted: sites willing to try web application to insert holidays server-side into Hosted Exchange / Office 365.  Short learning curve (this is a web app and not the cmdlet) but we do want some feedback.  Apply to email address in above image.

Injecting Student Class Schedules into Exchange Online

At one site we've been injecting class schedules and recruiting events into individual student calendars for a few years now -- and we've just found out some others want to do it.

So here's a quick primer of what is possible.

We built a special-purpose tool for this particular client, but you can use our holiday cmdlet with the schedules in a CSV file.

Here is Zyg's daughter's Economics class in the syllabus and translated into a CSV.

Because her university probably won't give me credentials, I loaded it into my calendar (initially blank)

Then populated with her classes:

Opening one of them gives some more detail as well as seeing it tied to a useful Category.

We also have the capability to selectively REMOVE these classes, set them as Free or Busy, all the usual sorts of things you'd want to do.
Keep in mind - this is all going on server-side with no end user intervention.

Where did the HTML in my note body go?

One of our customers asked us to put up a custom message in the Sumatra Holiday tool.  This message needed a small bit of HTML formatting in EWS Managed API v1.2 code.  A "slam-dunk."  Yet this simple HTML produces horrible output:

Microsoft published a KB article that confirmed the problem:  meeting request that you send from an EWS application is in plain text format instead of HTML format when an attendee opens the request by using Outlook in online mode

The fix? Patch your servers! Here's the link: Update Rollup 3 for Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 2 (KB2685289)

We patched our dev server this weekend and confirmed it works!

(PS: we're tagging this as an API bug, but it really isn't.....

Visual Basic Script to make calendar objects public

Well those fine, fine people at Oracle make the default PRIVATE for ICS exports in Oracle Calendar Server 10.x.

SO we have options for making our process make them NON-PRIVATE if you wish.

OR if you want to migrate it as private and then change it, this VB script will help.

---------------------

Here is a VB Script that will make items public

---------------------

'Used this MSDN as a hint: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa171274(v=office.11).aspx

Dim appOutlook As New Outlook.Application

Dim OutlookItems As Outlook.Items

Public Sub ClearCalendarItemsPrivateFlag()

Set OutlookItems = appOutlook.GetNamespace("MAPI").GetDefaultFolder(olFolderCalendar).Items

For Each appointment In OutlookItems

    appointment.Sensitivity = olNormal  'or olPrivate if you want to turn it back

    appointment.Save

Next appointment

End Sub

Test insertion: 401 or 500 error resolution protocol

Suppose you're testing your permissions and get either a ‘500’ or a ‘401’ error.

Use the following table to sort those issues out.

HTTP Response	Most Likely Issue	Solution
500	The "test user" does not exist in Exchange  or  is not mailbox enabled	Verify account exists in the domain, it is enabled, a mailbox user  (try to access the account in OWA using the service account credentials)
	The "SERVICE ACCOUNT" cannot impersonate the "test user"	Verity  there is a management_role assignment "ApplicationImpersonation" (Ex10) or ExtendedRights:"ms-Exch-EPI-Impersonation","ms-Exch-EPI-May-Impersonate" (ex07) for the SERVICE ACCOUNT that is applied to the server or the user you are attempting to test.
401	BASIC authentication is not enabled for the EWS virtual directory in IIS	Set Basic authentication in IIS;  remember to restart IIS
	The "SERVICE ACCOUNT" is not authorized to submit requests to the CAS Server	Is this the account you granted impersonate rights to? Are the creds correct?  Paste the "ews url" into a browser.  Enter the service account creds, when prompted.  Do you see an EWS WSDL page?

Start with IIS Basic authentication on the EWSvirtual directory.  It’s the easiest to see / fix.

Shared Mailboxes -- Warning Will Robinson!

One of the new features in Exchange 2010 Sp1 contained a client side feature that enabled auto mapping of shared mailboxes to user’s Outlook 2010 profiles.)  This should be a major win for the shared mailboxes (e.g, IT Vacation Calendar, Helpdesk Coverage, etc.....)  AutoMapping allows the "delegate" to simply open Outlook and *poof*  there is the shared calendar.  No more navigating the GAL!  No more support headaches (at least in this area.) 

In fact, Steve Goodman has written a step-by-step approach in his blog post Auto-Mapping shared mailboxes in Exchange 2010 Sp1 with Outlook 2010 and Outlook 2007. 

There is a caveat, though.  What happens if you have users who do not want the mailboxes they "share"  to show up in their Outlook? I hit this issue, and have blogged about how to remove automapping.

If you automatically populating shared mailboxes in end user's calendrs is something you want, consider the implications from of a shared calendar showing up in an end user's calendar -- and leaving the end user no facility to remove those mailboxes.