Daylight Savings Time and Exchange Hybrid Environments -- Remember to apply CU6

Microsoft released June 2017 Quarterly Exchange Update (for Exchange 2016) on June 27, 2017. This pushes the build number to 15.01.1034.026

It's a MUST update for:

• Exchange Hybrid Environments (for more see a recent Sumatra Blog post on hybrid directory structures), particularly when the alias and SAM account names are different.  
• US customers -- it has the latest DST updates.  
• Sumatra's European customers -- it  fixes an error when the mailbox name contains an umlaut (Jörg, Hans-Günther, Köller, Müller, Dück and MANY more will be happy!)

Download Exchange CU6 for Exchange 2016 here.

On .NET Framework 4.6.1 and Exchange DANGER!

Please read On .NET Framework 4.6.1 and Exchange compatibility and then DO NOT install .NET 4.6.1.

Step away from the installer.....

Because if you allow it, to quote Microsoft "Mailboxes are quarantined and databases fail over unexpectedly in Exchange Server 2013."

Responses from external meeting attendees not appearing in Outlook tracking

Be aware -- responses from external meeting attendees are not appearing in Outlook tracking.

Messages stuck in OWA's DRAFTS folder (Post Exchange 2013 CU6 update)

I updated our Exchange servers to CU6 over the US Labor Day weekend and hit a few head-banging errors.

First, CU6 failed on the mailbox role. The solution: remove the Discovery mailbox.  Then setup successfully completed.  (Remember to recreate the discovery mailbox!)

After I restarted the Exchange servers, mail was stuck in the drafts folder.  I tested mailflow using the "test-mailflow" cmdlet, and saw it failed (not that stuck messages in OWA weren't enough):

A quick search pointed to DNS or Security policy problems. Not in our case. Next check, were all services running...."Test-ServiceHealth"

No...Two  services were disabled:  MS Exchange Transport Delivery (MSExchangeDelivery) and MS Exchange Transport Submission (MSExchangeSubmission.) Restarting those services made the mail flow once more!

Disappearing Contact/Calendar item body fixed in Exchange 2013 CU6

We blogged about clients reporting problems with notes after inserting contacts and calendar items from Beehive and MDaemon migrations April, '14.)


KB 2975003 confirmed this was a problem! The KB says: "...compose or edit a Calendar item by using Outlook Web App...and then save the item. When you open the item in Microsoft Outlook 2013 or Outlook 2010 in online mode, the body of the item disappears."  We scrambled and updated our code to set MAPI codes to fix the problem in our code.  But they reported their end users were still having the same problem on NEW items.



Now there is a fix: install Cumulative Update 6 for Exchange Server 2013: 2961810

BTW, for  customers with legacy tools, CU6 fixes the problem MAPI/CDO clients cannot connect to Exchange Server 2013.

Outlook 2013 Security Update breaks Out of Office for Exchange 2007 Mailboxes

Just what the title says:  Outlook 2013 Security Update breaks Out of Office in Exchange 2007 Mailboxes.  The link tells you what to do about it.

Remove an "AutoMapped" Mailbox from Outlook 2010

My Outlook takes forever to open.  I've finally figured out why:  I have added too many shared mailboxes that Outlook has to open.  Only I don't remember adding them.  Time to to remove them.  I right-hand click on the shared calendar and "remove calendar."  Outlook throws this error message: ("The group of folders is associated with an e-mail account.  To remove the account, click the File Tab, and then the Info tab, click Account Settings.  Select the e-mail account and then click Remove.)

If the solution were only that easy.  This is a shared mailbox that I have FULLACCESS to;  there is NO EMAIL account in my profile. 

The contributor: (or "feature") is "automapping!! (Here is how to set automapping.)  The solution, for EXCHANGE 2010 Sp2, is to DISABLE AUTOMAPPING!  Here are the powershell commands taken from a Micosoft Technet forum:

Disable automapping between "shared mailbox" and "delegate":
Add-MailboxPermission "Shared Mailbox" -User -AccessRights FullAccess -AutoMapping:$false
  
If you want to set it on all the mailboxes:
$mailbox = Get-Mailbox
$test = $mailbox |
     Foreach {Add-mailboxPermission $_.Name –User ‘administrator’ –AccessRight FullAccess –Automapping $false}

That's it!
Russ

Creating All Day Events with EWS in Office365

You might remember our recent post:

http://calendarservermigration.blogspot.com/2010/12/ews-outlook-live-exchange-release.html

about the head trip that we went through with migrating all day events into Exchange using EWS and how weirdly the display was different between versions of Outlook and OWA.

Well we're adding this to tell you it's the same head trip in Office365 (no real surprise there but we just feel the need to document it).

Zimbra 6 to Exchange 2010 calendar migration

It's been a year since Yahoo sold Zimbra to VMware (which reminded me of some of the scenes from prison movies involving cigarettes).

And now is when people are starting to contact us en masse asking if we can move their calendars from Zimbra 6 to Exchange 2010.

Yes, we can.

The way we do it is really convenient. We open the mySQL database and read all the calendar, contact, and task data directly and insert it into Exchange using our usual, field-proven process.
You heard that right: NO user intervention, one spot for an Admin to pull the data and insert the data.

So let's take a look at the BEFORE and AFTER.

Jimi Hendrix's calendar on Zimbra 6.0.7 looks like this:

After extraction and insertion into Live @ Edu it looks as we would expect:

Note, the tentative meeting is tentative, the accepted is accepted, and the declined doesn't appear because that's the way Exchange works. We keep all recurrences and the meetings are completely LIVE on live @ Edu.

But wait -- there's more.
Contacts and Tasks come along for the ride too.

But we'll show you those in a separate posting.

Shared calendar items are shown incorrectly in Exchange 2007 (Fixed in SP3 RU1)

Sumatra enterprise clients use shared calendars to allow Managers to look at employee calendars, employees to access common calendars (e.g., the 'vacation' calendar, or to look at conference rooms (when free/busy doesn't contain enough information.)

Unfortunately, the calendar events are often shown at the wrong time.

Microsoft KB 976100 offered a hotfix for this issue. It was also included in the Exchange 2007 SP3 Rollup 1 (KB 2279665)

For clients who share calendars -- apply this rollup.

Exchange 2007 Calendar Issues fixed with Rollup2

On 1.22.2010, Microsoft released Rollup2 For Exchange 2007 SP2.

Here are the calendar-related issues that Rollup2 addresses:

970817 An appointment is displayed incorrectly as an all-day event if you use a mobile device to synchronize the calendar in Exchange Server 2007

971177 The Auto Attendant 'Business Hours' schedule is not updated in Exchange Server 2007 when the DST setting is changed

971349 Exchange Server 2007 users intermittently cannot access an Exchange Server 2003 user's Free/Busy information in Office Outlook 2007

973969 Incorrect exceptions are generated for a recurring iCalendar message when an Exchange Server 2007 server processes an SMTP message that contains the iCalendar message part

974161 Some attendees cannot receive a meeting cancellation notification when the appointment recurrence pattern is changed by using EWS in Exchange Server 2007

974999 The "Task Owner" field is not set when you create a task in Outlook Web Access

975165 EWS proxying requests fail after you run Availability Service requests in a CAS to CAS proxying scenario in Exchange Server 2007

975404 An attachment of a meeting request cannot be opened when you use a CDO application to accept a meeting request in Exchange Server 2007:

975903 The RemoveDelegate operation of EWS fails, and then a "500 internal server" error response and event ID 4999 are logged in an Exchange Server 2007 server

976025 The free/busy information of an Exchange Server 2007 user is not displayed

977091 The time for an updated meeting request is incorrectly shown in an exception instance of a recurring meeting request on an Exchange Server 2007 environment

Exchange 2007 Rollup 9 for SP1

MS released Exchange 2007 Rollup 9 for SP1 last week. The KnowledgeBase article (970162) reports twelve calendar, Outlook/OWA-related fixes:

1. 954739 Exchange Impersonation feature does not work if a cross-forest topology has only a one-way trust relationship between forests (Ex07SP1)
2. 961124 Some messages are stuck in the Outbox folder or the Drafts folder (Ex07SP1)
3. 961544 Mobile users whose location is set to New Zealand cannot synchronize an exceptional occurrence after the daylight saving time (DST) update (KB 951072) is installed (Ex07SP1)CAS server
4. 967479 Entourage clients cannot synchronize with mailboxes (Ex07Sp1/Win 08)
5. 967525 Error 4 is returned when you synchronize a supported list of contact properties by using Exchange ActiveSync(Ex07SP1)
6. 967676 E-mail address properties of contacts changed through Exchange Web Services (EWS) are not updated in Outlook or Outlook Web Access (OWA)(Ex07SP1)
7. 968081 Monthly recurring meetings are declined if the "Schedule only during working hours" option is enabled(Ex07SP1)
8. 968350 When you change the location field of a recurring calendar item to empty, the location field is set to the default value of the recurring series if this recurring item is synchronized on a Windows Mobile device (Ex07SP1)
9. 969054 Error message after user replies to a message that has more than 300 recipients in Outlook Web Access (OWA): "Microsoft Exchange issued an unexpected response (500)" (Ex07SP1)
10. 969324 Outlook crashes when you try to use Outlook to view e-mail messages that are arranged by subject in (Ex07SP1)
11. 969838 An error message is returned when a user tries to change a recurring appointment in Office Outlook Web Access that was created in Outlook 2007 (Ex07SP1)
12. 969969 OWA Error "Outlook Web Access has encountered a Web browsing error" when a user tries to delete a calendar item

Double Booking in Exchange 2003? Look to BES Versions

Gentle Reader,

As a blogging calendar geek Ms. Calendars sometimes gets requests from the field. When they are useful to the general calendar-server managing public, she publishes them.

So it has come to pass that a question came in:

You mentioned on your site about the "perennial exchange problem of double-booked meetings". I thought I would drop you a line to see if this qualifies. We have Exchange 2003 and Blackberry Enterprise Server 4.1.3. Our users run Outlook 2003. We get these periods where users claim they are getting double booked meetings. More often than not we see one as tentative and one as accepted in the same time period. Do you have a resource that clearly explains why this happens? Is BES the culprit? Thanks in advance. Rick

Double bookings are really not unusual in Outlook. Microsoft itself has a guide on How to troubleshoot missing and duplicate appointments in Outlook. It is a work of singular genius: wonderfully complete in what could be causing the problem, and mostly silent on solutions or protocols to solutions (in contrast to Russ's latest blog entry), all the while referring you to other links which will hopefully keep you from realizing you are being given the runaround.

Just because we make a good living out of working with Exchange does not mean we're going to drink the Kool-Aid or praise the manure as BBQ.

But it does advise keeping abreast of your software updates, and that did turn out to be the problem.

In the end the problem has been solved by updating to BES version 4.1.6. The release notes go over the brand new BlackBerry Calendar Synchronization Tool. And to see what effect this will have on your Exchange server, see Technical Note: Impact of using the BlackBerry Calendar Synchronization Tool. So keep an eye on your BES servers, folks.

In general, we've noticed pretty big changes going on in CDO on E2K3: see here and here. With two years of E2K7 migrations under our belt, we're encouraging folks to migrate into E2K7 rather than E2K3.

Also, check out Information about CDO patching and third-party programs that interface with the calendar in Exchange Server and in Outlook.

We have another report of calendar weirdness from the field, this one with BES and E2K7, which we are pretty sure is related to the known problems with cached mode and the incremental change system. We'll blog on that later.

In general, if you notice weird behavior on your calendars, start with your BES server and work back from there. BES is the source of most calendar headaches we hear tell of.

Exchange 2007 Rollup 8 for SP1

MS released Exchange 2007 Rollup 8 for SP1 last week. The KnowledgeBase http://support.microsoft.com/kb/968012 reports four calendar fixes:

• 959990 An error occurs when you try to update a recurring appointment by using an Outlook client that is connected to an Exchange 2007 server
• 966535 Duplicate messages are sent to an external recipient if the recipient is included in multiple distribution lists in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
• 967097 Users may receive duplicate calendar items for the updated instance on mobile devices
• 967109 delegate cannot accept a meeting request for an online meeting in an Exchange Server 2007 environment
  

Exchange Server 2007 SP1 Update Rollup 7 due 3/24/09

Microsoft is scheduled to release Update Rollup 7 for Exchange 2007 SP1 today (3/24/09). Based on our review of what's fixed, if you have Entourage clients, expect to do a migration in the next month, or use calendaring, then you should apply this. We will apply this and let you k now if we find anything (if you find anything please post comments!)

Here are some of the calendar-related fixes in the update:

• OWA and Exchange Web Services (EWS) do not correctly display a monthly/yearly recurring meeting or appointment (KB# 960291)
• Customized properties of a recipient's calendar are removed (KB# 949464)
• Can't read calendar items when some IMAP4/POP3 clients (esp. mobile devices) connect to exchange (KB# 951341)
• Messages Queued for Submission performance counter increases when Domino meeting requests are delivered (KB# 953094)
• You do not receive an NDR after a meeting request was sent after a change to the recipient's LegacyDN (KB# 957124)

And for Entourage:

• The Info store may crash when Entourage client synchs (KB# 957947)
• Unexpected modified instances of recurring meeting (KB# 949113)
• Duplicate Calendar entries (KB# 949114)

Again, this is just a few of the fixes in the update. Read the full KB 960384

Russ

More Calendar Weirdness in Exchange 2003

We keep hearing about calendar bugs in Exchange 2003.

Cases in point:

A meeting update does not appear in Outlook Web Access after a meeting organizer updates the time of one meeting occurrence in an Exchange Server 2003 environment

When you use a CDO-based application to manage calendar items in Exchange Server 2003, the application crashes intermittently

Keep in mind: None of this has anything to do with a calendar migration. It's what seeps into Microsoft products when the Redmond Belle tries to "encourage" you to "upgrade." Both of these are related to CDO and the most prominent CDO-based application is the Blackberry Enterprise Server.

ActiveSync bug in Exchange 2003 - Warning warning!

November looks like ActiveSync month. First I dropped my Sprint HTC SmartPhone because as a phone it was unusable (despite the fact that sync with Outlook was passable).

But Chris Quinn, one of our pals in the calendaring community, alerts us to a Microsoft KB Article 958781:

Some recurring calendar items disappear from the "Day/Week/Month" view in Outlook when a user uses Exchange ActiveSync on a mobile device to modify a recurring meeting in an Exchange 2003 environment

Much like Snakes on a Plane the title says it all.

But unlike SoaP there's more here to worry about (aside from whether you want the extended edition DVD).

The list of affected files for the fix to this problem includes pretty much all of CDO's associated files PLUS MADFB (the main Free-Busy updater).

This is a scary bunch of sensitive code to be changing all at once. And anything that relies on CDO (Anybody out there have BlackBerry Servers?) could get caught in the backwash.

So our warning to you still on Exchange 2003 is to test this HotFix BEFORE you deploy it if you have anything other than a vanilla Exchange 2003 environment

Delegates / Proxy Migration in Exchange 2007 sp1

One thing we notice is that folks sometimes want to have their Proxies (Meeting Maker term) or Designates (Oracle Calendar Server term) migrated into Exchange 2007 as Delegates (Outlook term).

For Exchange 2007 before sp1 you were out of luck. For Exchange 2003 you only need to use CDO 1.21 with documented memory leaks. Those of you for whom we have migrated Proxies know this is why the process to migrate proxies takes almost as long as the process to migrate your calendar data. And annoyingly CDO 1.21 is not supported at all in .NET code.

For E2K7 sp1, Microsoft documentation gives you the impression this is possible using only Exchange Web Services. DeVa expands on this a bit in Adding delegates in Exchange Web Services (sp1).

However, our direct experience with a recent client migration to E2K7 sp1 and Glen (whom we cannot praise too much) confirm that setting permissions via Exchange Web Services is insufficient. You also need to set permissions on the Schedule+ NON_IPM_SUBTREE.

Wait you say -- this is 2008 and I just saw the word "Schedule+" appear in print, like it was... 1992 or something. Is this possible?

Rest assured, it is mos def.

In fact at least one user has reported a problem and documented a solution in in this data structure during a migrating from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2007. Microsoft seems to have picked up on this in KB 945602.

For those of you who want a fuller story on how Delegates relate to the Free/Busy folder, thank Ximian for their work in reverse-engineering and publishing the results (which they did for E2K3).

So the end result here: be really careful writing scripts to set Delegates for calendar functions in Exchange 2007 and make sure you take into account the NON_IPM_SUBTREE in addition to the documented EWS code.

And, this being Exchange, there are additional complications because .... well.... because Exchange is clearly built by committee. So if you have BOTH Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007, and use Delegate (and I'll bet the answer is "yes" all around), you need to check out KB 924470. While you're at it -- these also give you some idea how funky basic Delegate functioning is in E2K7: KB 950794, KB 918797, KB 932207, and KB 942418.

Does it work or not? This is so convoluted we're not sure. If any of you have feedback let us know.

Best signature we've seen so far

Christopher Quinn in Wisconsin, one of our favorite calendar geeks, has one of the more helpful email signatures we've seen in a while, which we're posting here to spread the word.

These are the top behaviors to encourage to keep from creating broken meetings in Outlook/Exchange.

The 4 most important things you can do to prevent calendar related issues

1. Always send updates to all when making any change to a meeting


2. Always send cancellations to meetings being removed from a calendar


3. Always process meeting requests every time you open them


4. Make sure that requests are deleted from the inbox after replying

And for those of you who want the full story - check out the excellent article Outlook meeting requests: Essential do’s and don’ts

A new source for broken meetings in Outlook/Exchange

Just as we're getting certain we found and plugged one source of broken meetings, along comes another.

Namely, KB 954284 : Outlook 2007 does not send out meeting cancellations if you remove all invited attendees from a previously created appointment.

The interesting thing about this one is that it occurs in pure Outlook 2007 environments, as opposed to the more well-known 2003/2007 cases.

We're looking at it.