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One cool thing about a hosted service is that changes can be made that benefit end customers on an on-going basis. Over the weekend, the Exchange team have just rolled out the ability to reset a password in the OWA Options for Exchange Labs administrators. Using it is simple: After signing in to Exchange Labs as an administrator, navigate to ‘OWA Options’ or just go to https://www.exchangelabs.com/ecp and make sure you have selected to manage ‘My Organization’ First thing you’ll see is the Mailboxes UI. Search for the user you want to do the password reset on, highlight the username, then click ‘Reset Password’, a dialog box will open and you can change the users password. 
…and that’s it! Happy password resetting! Don't forget, you can also do this programmatically. Jonny  
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For those existing Live@edu customers out there that need to log a support call for any reason, you can now do so by using our new eForm here: https://support.live.com/eform.aspx?productKey=wlpc&ct=eformts. All incidents that are logged will be routed to a human working at Microsoft :) I get to see some of the things that customers ask about from time, and sometimes these can be addressed by the help you can find on Technet, or this blog (but remember, I am not an official document source, just a field-based blogger when I am in between customer engagements :-) ). Also, don't forget, you can also check out overall service status for Exchange Labs here. I hope that all helps if you ever need it. Jonny 
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I had been intending to do a post on this for some time, but like a lot of my intentions, they sometimes do not get much further than that :) We have a lot of Exchange based offerings today, and Dmitry Sotnikov has just produced a nice, concise overview of his take on what we offer on his blog. Some customers do find a lot of this challenging to get their heads around at times... but I do hope it demonstrates that we offer choice, and that we are serious about our Software plus Services strategy with some tangible offerings :) Thanks Dmitry! Jonny 
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I had a conversation with a customer recently about setting mail forwards administratively. They had 2 scenarios we discussed...perhaps there are some more you can think of? One scenario was in the context of a migration to our Exchange Labs service where the institution had a list of all of the email addresses students used (Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo!, etc). They wanted to provide students with their new Exchange Labs email addresses and set a forward on all of these mailboxes so that mail got delivered in 2 places until such time that students familiarized themselves enough with Exchange Labs to make the permanent switch. The other scenario was where the institution wanted to investigate all incoming mail to a student's mailbox without the student knowing that this was happening or being able to turn this off. Both of these can be achieved using the same method I outline below, but there are some things you should be aware of. The command to do this in PowerShell, assuming you are pushed onto a runspace is: Set-Mailbox jackjones -DeliverToMailboxAndForward:$True -ForwardingAddress dannyk ...where jackjones is the mailbox that you want to set the forwarding on, and dannyk is the name of the mailbox/contact/group/etc that you want mail forwarded to. You can use the mailbox name, the SMTP address, the DN here; I am just keeping it short for convenience. The key thing to be aware of is that you can only use this command to forward mail to objects that exist in the Exchange Labs Global Address List. So in the first scenario outlined above, if you wanted to build this instruction into some bigger script that did this forward for 1000's of users, you would need to ensure that the target email addresses are all in your GAL as mail-enabled contacts first. So this is not really a great option as you would end up with double entries for every individual you are managing. A much better way to do this is to tell users to set up their own forwarding through the Outlook Web Access UI or Outlook 2007 interfaces through inbox rules. For the second scenario, this method would be a much better choice; the setting does not show up in the user interface. Hope this helps... if options change in the future, I will let you know. Jonny 
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Just a quick note here as I have mentioned this to a few customers in recent days and none of them knew about this. If you want to be able to chat with your messenger contacts, but you do not have access to the full installable client, you can do this online at http://webmessenger.msn.com. Happy web chatting! Jonny
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So the big Educause event is on this week, and many of my team members are there waving the flag for Microsoft. We also have the Partner Developer Conference running in parallel with this. This year the big story is all around Software + Services, which is really our take on this whole Cloud Computing phenomenon that is currently sweeping the world of IT. I tell education customers that Live@edu is a good concrete example of some of the things that you can roll out now as a taster for things to come. Today, we announced a load of things that make the future tastier still. The full press release is here: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-28Educause08PR.mspx. Below, I touch on some of these. Azure - a hosted cloud computing/development platform: Think Facebook applications for one, or think of a research department in a university that wants to spin up a bunch of computing cycles to solve some mathematical problem and they do not have the resources to do this locally... 
Office Web Applications: Use your favorite productivity applications through your browser and not have to worry about having Office installed to edit documents. Good for students that want to work in a controlled collaborative way with their documents, or researchers working across geographical boundaries on a paper. 
Geneva: Then buried a little deeper, we had the announcement that we will be supporting SAML in our forth-coming "Geneva" offering - a claims based authentication platform. This has implications for how we may eventually work with Shibboleth - more to come here as the development unfolds. Enjoy! Jonny
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While I have to say I prefer to use PowerShell to create mailboxes as I like to do some customization of the scripts, if you simply want to create a load of mailboxes in one go, the CSV Import tool will do the job just as well. There is a good collection of articles on this tool on our Technet site here. The only thing I can say you need to watch out for is that the csv file format that you use with the CSV Import Tool is slightly different than the one you use with our CSV_Parser.ps1 script. CSV Import Prerequisites: Prepare a CSV file for use with the CSV Import Tool:
There are a number of places you could obtain a CSV file from in the format required to use with the CSV Import Tool. If you have an Active Directory running to support your student accounts, you can use the CSVDE tool to get this file (download here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=101669). If you do not have an AD running, it is highly likely you will have other databases you can extract an accurate list of your user population from. - The CSV file needs to be laid out in a set format. You can work with many combination of actions and mailbox attributes when creating your new users, but only a few of these are mandatory:
- Action: The type of procedure to be performed, for example ‘Add’
- Type: You can create 2 types of item, an ‘Account’ or a ‘Contact’
- EmailName: the email address of the new mailbox you want to create. This address also becomes the LiveID
- Then there are many others…a full list of all the attributes you can specify are here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchangelabshelp/bb847829.aspx, along with sample csv files for your reference.
Anyway, I recorded a short video of me creating some users with CSVImport.exe for your viewing pleasure. download Enjoy! Jonny 
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Customers often ask me what all they can do through PowerShell with Exchange Labs. There are several resources I always refer to, but sometimes it is nice just to have a list in front of you. General resources you can use are: Scripting with PowerShell:
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/hubs/msh.mspx Exchange Labs
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchangelabshelp/default.aspx And if you want a list, then you can run this command, courtesy of one of our consultants (Ben Appleby)... Invoke-Command –Runspace $rs {Get-ManagementRole “OrgManagement_Tenant” | Get-ManagementRoleEntry} | Select Name, Parameter | ConvertTo-HTML > CmdletExport.html Enjoy! Jonny 
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A college was asking me the other day about enabling external email forwarding for Exchange Labs. This is not a feature that is on by default, but you can enable it in a few minutes by logging on to your service through PowerShell, creating a runspace, popping onto it and then entering: set-remotedomain * -autoforwardenabled $true That's it. Mailbox users can then use rules to set up mail forwards to other services by simply typing the address to send mail to into the rule. Enjoy! Jonny 
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Just a quick note. This Thursday I will be doing a Webcast on the various deployment options for Exchange Labs. You can sign up for the Webcast here: http://www.educationwebcasts.com/Webcast.aspx?i=3472. Maybe I will see you there? The session will be archived, so if you miss it, I will be sure to repost here on my blog. Jonny
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A few months back, we kicked off some work with St John's University on integrating Exchange Labs with their deployment of Luminis. In summary, St John's wanted to enable students that were logged onto the Luminis portal to be able to bring up their email in OWA without being challenged for authentication on our service. A screen-shot representing what is now in place is below, and a site dedicated to the project, managed by St John's, can be found on our CodePlex shared source site here: http://www.codeplex.com/LuminisLiveSSO. You will find sample code, prescriptive setup documentation, and a place to ask your questions. 
If you enroll in the Exchange Labs program, you will also have access to additional documentation on SSO. Enjoy! Jonny 
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I had a conversation with a customer the other day about what kings of things should they be doing in their first week or so with Exchange Labs...is there a checklist anywhere for example? Well we do provide starter guidance in the materials we send out during the enrollment process...but I thought I would complement this here for you. I came up with the following table of things of do, and resources you can use at each phase. I got some positive feedback on this, so I am happy to share it here. Any thoughts, let me know, and I can update it: Task | Notes | Resource | | ENVISIONING | | | | Review Exchange Labs offer | Get to know what it is we are offering. The service is built on Exchange 14, but know that this is not the same as on-premise Exchange...features you see documented on Technet are what you get today...more to come over time. | blog
Technet
| | PLANNING | | | | Determine your domain structure | Do you want to use an existing DNS namespace, or create a new one? | blog
| | Understand your Single Sign On options | We support web-based SSO in some scenarios today, check out this customer-run project for ideas. | http://codeplex.com/luminisSSO/ | | Familiarize yourself with the look and feel of the service | Get to know what users will see, and what admins can do | blog | | TESTING | | | | Activate your service by configuring your DNS | Creating an MX record to start mail-flow is an important part of the service activation. | technet | | Install PowerShell CTP and WinRM 2.0 | Make sure you install the right tools for the job | blog | | Create some test accounts and work with them for a while | Do not test with your real accounts, use samples instead | blog | | Create some test distribution groups and work with them for a while | Groups are a powerful feature, get to know the difference between standard groups and dynamic groups, and how to manage them | blog
technet | | Familiarize yourself with managing mailboxes | Creating mailboxes is only one part of the story...get familiar with on-going management | blog
technet | | Decide on a naming scheme for mailboxes | If you are planning on an 'email address for life', then some thought needs to be put in here. | blog | Jonny 
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What better way to bring the latest technology to the masses than to do a tour! Visit the link above, and see if someone from Microsoft will be arriving on your campus soon! Even better, check out the recording of the tour destiniation on Virtual Earth.
Jonny 
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A customer asked me today about where you can get the 'New-ClosedCampus.ps1' and 'New-EthicalWall.ps1' scripts. They wanted to experiment with blocking mail to and from certain mail domains and mailboxes. I had to admit, I didn't know where these files could be obtained from. I tried the technet site, I tried the Connect site...eventually I had to ask someone 
Turns out these scripts are available for use directly on our service... What this means is that you either need to create a runspace on Remote PowerShell and execute the script by using the Invoke-Command cmdlet, or by jumping directly onto the remote console by using push-runspace, and then just accessing the scripts directly.
I will blog on the use of both of these scripts by the end of the week...need to dust off the microphone again...in the meantime, you can read the Technet articles related to these scripts here:
and here:
Jonny 
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