Sembee

One of the most useful online tools to come out of Microsoft for the Exchange product is their testexchangeconnectivity site - or to give it's correct name - the Microsoft Exchange Remote Connectivity Analyzer (ExRCA). However the URL is a mouthful, and if you are typing it as often as I do, it is easy to make mistakes.

Therefore I have setup a short URL for it using our Exchange community site exbpa.com  - you can get to it via http://et.exbpa.com/

I was going to use te.exbpa.com (which also works) but I thought et would be easier to remember.

Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, MS Exchange Server Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, MS Exchange Server

With the release of official support for Exchange 2010 and BES 5.0, I thought I would have another crack at getting Exchange 2010 to work directly with BES 4.1. This is instead of using an Exchange 2007 server somewhere in the mix.

I used Blackberry Professional Server in my testing, installed on Windows 2003 separate to Exchange 2010.

To my surprise, I have managed to get it working - with no interim servers used. A clean Exchange 2010 installation was used, along with BPS 4.1.3A (so not even the latest version).

In addition to the regular installation of the Blackberry Server software (so logged in to the machine as besadmin etc), to get things to work I had to do the following.

1. Install Exchange 2010 rollup 1 on the Exchange server.
2. Install the latest version of the CDO on the Blackberry server.
3. Set more permissions than normal (see below)

The server I was using also had a public folder store created and mounted. I have not tested it with Exchange 2010 without Public Folders.
During the installation there was an error about being unable to verify the permissions, which I ignored.
 
Tested Functionality

I have tested the following:

• Full over the air Enterprise activation. 
• Sending and receiving email from the device. 
• Lookup against the GAL and the personal address book
• Adding a task from the Blackberry and seeing sync to the account. 
• Adding a task from OWA and seeing it sync to the Blackberry
• Adding a calendar entry from the Blackberry and seeing sync to account.
• Adding a calendar entry from OWA seeing it sync to the Blackberry

Of course functionality that doesn't require Exchange - such as Blackberry Browser access to the intranet continues to work correctly.
 
Permissions

To get things to work, I had to set additional permissions. This may well be related to the change in the database model, which is now at the Org level rather than the server level.

Exchange 2010 View Only Exchange Admin.

This permission is no more, so the equivalent has to be set:

Add-RoleGroupMember "View-Only Organization Management" -member besadmin

Store  / Server level permissions

The usual permissions used with Exchange 2007 set via the following command didn't appear to work:

get-mailboxserver | add-adpermission –user BESAdmin –accessrights ExtendedRight –extendedrights Send-As, Receive-As, ms-Exch-Store-Admin

I had to grant the permissions at the database level:

Get-MailboxDatabase |add-adpermission -user besadmin -accessrights ExtendedRight -extendedrights Receive-As, Send-As, ms-exch-store-admin

Get-PublicFolderDatabase |add-adpermission -user besadmin -accessrights ExtendedRight -extendedrights Receive-As, Send-As, ms-exch-store-admin

As the permission is being granted at the mailbox database level, if databases are changed/added/removed then the permission will need to be run again.
As always, the permission didn't take effect immediately, therefore I restarted the information store and the Blackberry services to get things to take effect.

CDO Installation

The latest version of CDO was used, which can be downloaded (At the time of writing) from this location:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=e17e7f31-079a-43a9-bff2-0a110307611e&DisplayLang=en

MS Exchange Server, Blackberry, Exchange 2010 MS Exchange Server, Blackberry, Exchange 2010

I am pleased to announce that the domain exbpa.com has been saved for the Exchange community.
This was a domain that Microsoft first used a few years ago to point to their (at the time) recently released Exchange Best Practises Analyser. There are thousands of links to this domain across the internet as well as in books and magazines.

However Microsoft recently decided to allow the domain to lapse and early this morning it was finally deleted.

Fortunately I was able to register it myself through my consultancy company Sembee Ltd and therefore kept it out of the hands of a domain squatter. 

I have uploaded a slightly modified version of the list of Exchange resources that I maintain at Daniel Petri's forum, which as well as the links to the Exchange Best Practises Analyzer, also contains links to other Microsoft tools, blogs etc.

http://exbpa.com/

While it is not the best designed web site in the world, it does the job. Hopefully the Exchange community will find it of some use.

Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, MS Exchange Server, Web Sites, Amset IT Solutions Ltd. / Sembee Ltd., Exchange 2010 Exchange 2003, Exchange 2007, MS Exchange Server, Web Sites, Amset IT Solutions Ltd. / Sembee Ltd., Exchange 2010

Starting to see lots of questions on forums about setting up a hosted Exchange 2010 system.
Well to be supported, you are going to have to wait 12 months.

"Hosting in Exchange 2010 will be supported approximately twelve months after the release of Exchange 2010."

http://www.microsoft.com/hosting/solutions/hostedmessaging.mspx

MS Exchange Server, Exchange 2010 MS Exchange Server, Exchange 2010

Interesting little snippet posted on the RIM web site today.

"October 20, 2009 - Research In Motion (RIM) is pleased to notify you that we are working in close collaboration with Microsoft on compatibility and support for BlackBerry® Enterprise Server for Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010. Compatibility is expected later this year. BlackBerry® Technical Support Services for BlackBerry Enterprise Server for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 is expected within 30 days following the global availability of Microsoft Exchange Server 2010."

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/support/software/server_compatibility.jsp#tab_tab_news

No doubt that will mean BES only, as the Blackberry Professional version seems to be ignored. Looks like I will be giving up my Blackberry when I move across to Exchange 2010 shortly.

Blackberry, Exchange 2010 Blackberry, Exchange 2010