Modify "Linked","Legacy" and "Shared" mailbox types in Exchange 2010

Every now and then Exchange messes up the mailbox types after moving between databases.
Here's how to change the mailbox types:

Linked;

Set-User "User Name" -LinkedMasterAccount $null

Legacy;

set-Mailbox alias -ApplyMandatoryProperties

Shared;

Set-Mailbox "Alias" -Type Regular

From user type to Shared type

Set-Mailbox "Username" -Type Shared

“Upgrade” Distribution Groups after moving from Exchange 2003 To 2010 and find empty distribution lists

When migrating from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010, you have to upgrade the distribution groups to 2010 level.

 

Here's how;

 

While co-existing Exchange 2003 with 2010, the “membership approval tab” on the distribution groups property page is all grayed out. You can’t manage any settings in that tab at all. The behaviour is the same for universal and global groups.

 

 

If you make any change to the group (like editing the name), the console asks whether you want to upgrade the object and that you no longer will be able to manage it with legacy Exchange tools.

 

 



 

That raises the question of whether we need to “upgrade” the distribution groups while moving from Exchange 2003 to 2010. I can’t find any information regarding this in Technet. But, to make it work, we need to “upgrade”.
Another efficient way of upgrading the distribution group is to use PowerShell. Run the command below to upgrade. 

Set-DistributionGroup –identity “groupname” –ForceUpgrade

 

In order to upgrade all your distribution groups, run the command below.

Get-DistributionGroup –resultsize unlimited | Set-DistributionGroup –ForceUpgrade 

 

 

After this some cleanup may be required. Deleting the empty DSG's

 

$dls= get-distributiongroup -resultsize unlimited

$dls |? {!(get-distributiongroupmember $_)}

 

When the powershell command returns, it shows the distributiongroups that have no members.

 

Name     DisplayName     GroupType          PrimarySmtpAddress
----     -----------     ---------          ------------------
DSGname  DSGDisplayname  Global,SecurityEnabled    DSGSMTPaddress

 

 

Source

Find and reset disconnected RDP Sessions

We have a lot of servers. When I get disconnected, I may leave hanging sessions on those servers which I forget to properly close. Then, after I change the password for my admin account, I sometimes get locked out as a result of what I had open in the now disconnected session.

Tracking this down is always annoying and time consuming.
When users (including administrators) are terminated, you want to find and reset those sessions too. 

ServerSessions.vbs is a script for admins to run to track down sessions on servers and optionally reset them. You can list sessions on all servers in a domain, and reset either all or just disconnected sessions

The script in VBS:

'ServerSessions.vbs
'Lists and optionally resets a user's server sessions
'Alan dot Kaplan at VA dot Gov. 
'10/24/2011.  10/26 version fixed logging when list only
Option Explicit    
dim wshShell
Set wshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Dim retval
Const ADS_CHASE_REFERRALS_ALWAYS = &H20
Dim oConn, oCmd, oRS
Dim strADSPath, strADOQuery
Dim strDomainCN
Dim fso,logfile, appendout
Dim strUser, strSessionID
'Get the default ADsPath for the domain to search.
Dim root: Set root = GetObject("LDAP://rootDSE")
strADSPath = root.Get("defaultNamingContext")

Const ForAppend = 8
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")

If (Not IsCScript()) Then   'If not CScript, re-run with cscript...
 dim quote
 quote=chr(34)

 WshShell.Run "CScript.exe " & quote & WScript.ScriptFullName & quote, 1, true
    WScript.Quit             '...and stop running as WScript
End If
If InStr(1,MyOS,"Server",1) = 0 Then
 MsgBox "You must run this from server OS",vbExclamation + vbOKOnly,"Error"
 'WScript.Quit
End If
retval = MsgBox("This script will identify and optionally logoff disconnected sessions for a user on all of the servers " & _
 "in AD within a domain. Do you want to continue?",vbYesNo + vbQuestion,"Get List of all Servers")
 If retval = vbNo Then WScript.Quit

strADSPath = InputBox("Get server list from what domain","Domain",strADSPath)
 If strADSPath = "" Then WScript.Quit
strUser = InputBox("Search for what username?","User Name",wshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%USERNAME%"))
If strUser = "" Then WScript.Quit
dim message
message =  "Do you want to:" & VbCrLf & _
   "1) Get list only" & VbCrLf & _
   "2) Reset disconnected sessions" & VbCrLf & _
   "3) Reset all sessions for user" & VbCrLf & _
   "0) Quit" 
Dim iActionType
iActionType  = InputBox(message,"Choose Action",1)
iActionType = CDbl(iActionType)
If iActionType = 0 Then WScript.Quit

GetServerList
wshShell.Run "notepad.exe " & quote & logfile & quote
' =========== Functions and Subs ==========
Sub GetServerList()
 '--- Set up the connection ---
 Set oConn = CreateObject("ADODB.Connection")
 Set oCmd = CReateObject("ADODB.Command")
 oConn.Provider = "ADsDSOObject"
 oConn.Open "ADs Provider"
 Set oCmd.ActiveConnection = oConn
 oCmd.Properties("Page Size") = 50
 ocmd.Properties("Chase referrals") = ADS_CHASE_REFERRALS_ALWAYS

 logfile = Replace(strADSPath,",","_")
 logfile = Replace(logfile,"DC=","")
 logfile = wshShell.ExpandEnvironmentStrings("%userprofile%") & "\desktop\" & strUser & " In " &  logfile & ".txt"

 If fso.FileExists(logfile) Then fso.DeleteFile logfile,True
 set AppendOut = fso.OpenTextFile(logfile, ForAppend, True)
 strDomainCN = DomainCN(strADSPath)

 '--- Build the query string ---
 strADOQuery = "<LDAP://" & strDomainCN & "/" & strADSPath & ">;" & "(&(OperatingSystem=*Server*)(objectClass=computer))" &  ";" & _
     "Name;subtree"
 oCmd.CommandText = strADOQuery

 '--- Execute the query for the object in the directory ---
 Set oRS = oCmd.Execute
 If oRS.EOF and oRS.Bof Then
   MsgBox  "No Servers AD entries found!",vbCritical + vbOKOnly,"Failed"
   appendout.WriteLine "Query Failed"
 Else
  While Not oRS.Eof
     SessionQuery oRS.Fields("Name")
    oRS.MoveNext
  Wend
 End If

 oRS.Close
 oConn.Close
End Sub
Sub SessionQuery (strServer)
 WScript.Echo "Checking " & strServer
 dim objEx, data
 Set objEx = WshShell.Exec("QWinsta /server:" & strServer)
 'one line at a time
 While Not (objEx.StdOut.AtEndOfStream)
  data = objEx.StdOut.ReadLine
  If InStr(1,data,strUser,1) Then
   strSessionID = GetSession(data)
   if iactionType = 1 then
    EchoAndLog strServer & ",found session for " & strServer
   Else
    Wscript.echo strServer & ",found session for " & strServer
   End if
   'always logoff
   If iActionType = 3 Then ResetSession strServer, strSessionID
   'Logoff disconnected
   If iActionType =2 And InStr(1,data,"disc",1) Then
    ResetSession strServer,strSessionID
   End If
  End If
 Wend
End Sub
Sub ResetSession(strServer, ID)
 Dim strCommand, oExec
 strCommand = "reset session " & id & " /server:"  & strServer
 Set oExec    = WshShell.Exec(strCommand)
 wscript.sleep 500

 'this is typically empty
 While Not (oExec.StdOut.AtEndOfStream)
  EchoAndLog oExec.StdOut.ReadLine
 Wend

 If oExec.ExitCode <> 0 Then
      EchoAndLog strServer & ",Problem resetting session " & ID & " on server " & strServer & ", Non-zero exit code, " & oExec.exitcode
 Else
  EchoAndLog strServer & ",Reset session " & ID & " on server " & strServer
 End If
End Sub
Function DomainCN(strPath)
 DomainCN = Replace(strPath,",",".")
 DomainCN= Replace(DomainCN,"DC=","")
End Function
Function MyOS()
 Dim oWMI,ColOS,ObjOS, OSver
 Set oWMI = GetObject("winmgmts:\\.\root\cimv2")
 Set ColOS = oWMI.ExecQuery("SELECT Caption, version FROM Win32_OperatingSystem")
 For Each ObjOS In ColOS
   MyOS = objOS.caption & Space(1) & objos.version
 Next
End Function
Function GetSession(text)
  text = strip(lcase(Text))
  Dim tArray, i
  tArray = Split(text,Space(1))
  i = 0
  While tArray(i) <> lCase(strUser)
   i = i +1
  Wend

  GetSession = tArray(i+1)
End Function

Function Strip(text)
 text = Replace(text,vbtab,Space(1))
 While InStr(text,Space(2)) > 0
  text = replace(text,Space(2),Space(1))
 Wend
 Strip = text
End Function

Sub EchoAndLog (message)
 'Echo output and write to log
 Wscript.Echo message
 AppendOut.WriteLine message
End Sub 

Function IsCScript()
    If (InStr(UCase(WScript.FullName), "CSCRIPT") <> 0) Then
        IsCScript = True
    Else
        IsCScript = False
    End If
End Function

Source

How to and why block Linkedin access to your organization

This comes from Adam Fowler from www.adamfowlerit.com
Some more indepth view and testing was done by Paul Cunningham from www.exchangeserverpro.com

Recently Linkedin added a new feature to their site.
It gives you the abillity to search for contacts on your company address book.

How handy that may seem, the other side of this is that Linkedin is given your login credentials to the corporate Exchange environment.
I case of a security breach or hack over at our friends at Linkedin, your username, password, email address and webmail url are in the wrong hands posing a serious security issue.

So, here's how to stop Linkedin from accessing your Exchange servers:

First, under the Set-OrganizationConfig area, you'll need to check that EwsApplicationAccessPolicy is set to 'EnforceBlockList'

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-OrganizationConfig | fl ews*

EwsEnabled                 :
EwsAllowOutlook            :
EwsAllowMacOutlook         :
EwsAllowEntourage          :
EwsApplicationAccessPolicy :
EwsAllowList               :
EwsBlockList               :

If it shows up empty like above, you have to enable the blocklist.

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Set-OrganizationConfig -EwsApplicationAccessPolicy enforceblocklist
[PS] C:\Windows\system32>

Next, you need to add LinkedIn into the BlockList.

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Set-OrganizationConfig -EwsBlockList LinkedInEWS

Lets see how that looks.

[PS] C:\Windows\system32>Get-OrganizationConfig | fl ews*

EwsEnabled                 :
EwsAllowOutlook            :
EwsAllowMacOutlook         :
EwsAllowEntourage          :
EwsApplicationAccessPolicy : EnforceBlockList
EwsAllowList               :
EwsBlockList               : {LinkedInEWS}


Adam Fowler's source
Paul Cunninham's source