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Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


port 110 snipe

Filthy Lucre posted:

Enough to be able tell if we're using the lovely POP3 server or not, unfortunately. That was actually my first thought on how to handle this.

literally how would they know.

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Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124740(v=exchg.150).aspx

Filthy Lucre
Feb 27, 2006

NevergirlsOFFICIAL posted:

literally how would they know.
The guy that sold our CEO the system has access to it and he's the type of sperg who would check to see if it's being used. I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't reading some of the emails, as well.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD
that is so hilariously hosed but i still wouldnt touch it

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.

go3 posted:

that is so hilariously hosed but i still wouldnt touch it

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
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000110010101110010

Filthy Lucre posted:

The guy that sold our CEO the system has access to it and he's the type of sperg who would check to see if it's being used. I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't reading some of the emails, as well.

This is where you devise an elaborate trap to catch him in the act.

This situation is so hosed tho.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


Has anyone got a link that details how message routing in Office 365 works? E.g. if I have a tenant on the service that has added and verified two domains, and enabled mail for both, would sending a message from one domain to the other attempt to keep it within the tenant, or would it go outside to look at MX records?

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


Thanks Ants posted:

Has anyone got a link that details how message routing in Office 365 works? E.g. if I have a tenant on the service that has added and verified two domains, and enabled mail for both, would sending a message from one domain to the other attempt to keep it within the tenant, or would it go outside to look at MX records?

I don't have a link but I know from irl that it won't go outside, it will keep it inside like in normal exchange.

Dans Macabre
Apr 24, 2004


Filthy Lucre posted:

The guy that sold our CEO the system has access to it and he's the type of sperg who would check to see if it's being used. I wouldn't be surprised if he isn't reading some of the emails, as well.
I see.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


NevergirlsOFFICIAL posted:

I don't have a link but I know from irl that it won't go outside, it will keep it inside like in normal exchange.

Matches the behaviour I am seeing as well.

Time to teach some people to read NDRs and look at a control panel instead of sitting on an issue for 3 weeks.

Papercut
Aug 24, 2005

The quickest substitution in the history of the NBA
My office is running our own server with Exchange 2007 and Outlook 2010. Our IT guy (who wasn't really an IT guy, just the person who knew computers 25 years ago) is retiring and I'm trying to clean things up a bit before he goes. The extent of my Exchange knowledge is reading this thread during the holiday break.

With regards to the hate for public folders, what are the preferred alternatives? We use public folders for office-wide contacts lists and project/task management (due dates, assigned personnel, deliverables, etc). Should we be using shared contacts and shared task lists instead? I tried them out, and one annoying thing was that they don't show up in Outlook in the Folder List view, it seems like you have to go to the Contacts/Tasks views respectively to see shared items. Is there a way to fix this?

Are shared items like this easier to migrate (compared to public folders) to more recent versions of Exchange, or possibly to Exchange Online/Sharepoint if we decide to go with Office 365?

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
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000110010101110010
The problem with public folders is microsoft shitted on the concept, stagnated on features, declared it dead, declared it undead , and gave it legitimate first class scalable technology update in 2013/o365. 2007 and 2010 had to drag 2003 concepts of high availability public folders around like an albatross when the mailbox databases got really useful cluster and HA features. (Fun fact: "migrating public folders" is an anagram for gently caress THIS poo poo)

You're going to have a much better experience with features that public folder had in a legit sharepoint online instance. Even moving back and forth from o365 and sharepoint is a seamless process. Take ownership of that hellish 2007/2010 setup, put two bucks in that thing, and get everyone to the cloud.

And this is from a dude who admins a onprem.

incoherent fucked around with this message at 17:55 on Jan 8, 2015

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.
Shared Mailboxes are still hands down better than public folders, imo.

The Electronaut
May 10, 2009

incoherent posted:

(Fun fact: "migrating public mailboxes" is an anagram for gently caress THIS poo poo)

:golfclap:

Yea, gently caress 07/10 for public folders. What a mess.

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
00110100101101100011011
000110010101110010

Gyshall posted:

Shared Mailboxes are still hands down better than public folders, imo.

I've been rolling this out to great effect. The only problem i've had is to tell people to "send from", and you need to powershell to keep a copy of the sent item in the users AND shared mailbox.

incoherent fucked around with this message at 17:59 on Jan 8, 2015

Calidus
Oct 31, 2011

Stand back I'm going to try science!
Has anyone else with 365/exchange online had issues with outlook 2007/2010/2013 dropping its connection? I have zero issues with web app, which i love to force everyone to use but that isn't going to happen. It just loses it connection for 5 minutes at a time then comes back. Generally not a big deal until users start flipping out when an email sits in there outbox. It happen randomly about 2 or 3 times a day.

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.

Calidus posted:

Has anyone else with 365/exchange online had issues with outlook 2007/2010/2013 dropping its connection? I have zero issues with web app, which i love to force everyone to use but that isn't going to happen. It just loses it connection for 5 minutes at a time then comes back. Generally not a big deal until users start flipping out when an email sits in there outbox. It happen randomly about 2 or 3 times a day.

office365.docx

If you have any content filters on your network I'd check there, I have seen issues with firewalls/filters causing problems with outside connectivity if the O365 servers aren't whitelisted/added to an exception list.

Spudalicious
Dec 24, 2003

I <3 Alton Brown.
So I have a typical problem, a user who claims that they sent an email on Dec 30, only to eventually have it sent on Jan 7. I checked message tracking, and it isn't there at all (indicating it was sent over IMAP/POP...I think). User claims they sent using outlook (although outlook express wouldn't show up either from what I understand so I should double check that). What's the best way to prove that this person is mistaken and that they probably had their mail client disconnected when they sent the email?

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



Calidus posted:

Has anyone else with 365/exchange online had issues with outlook 2007/2010/2013 dropping its connection? I have zero issues with web app, which i love to force everyone to use but that isn't going to happen. It just loses it connection for 5 minutes at a time then comes back. Generally not a big deal until users start flipping out when an email sits in there outbox. It happen randomly about 2 or 3 times a day.

It's happened to me with outlook and Lync. I just write it off as network congestion because it always reconnected after a minute or two.

Gyshall
Feb 24, 2009

Had a couple of drinks.
Saw a couple of things.

Spudalicious posted:

So I have a typical problem, a user who claims that they sent an email on Dec 30, only to eventually have it sent on Jan 7. I checked message tracking, and it isn't there at all (indicating it was sent over IMAP/POP...I think). User claims they sent using outlook (although outlook express wouldn't show up either from what I understand so I should double check that). What's the best way to prove that this person is mistaken and that they probably had their mail client disconnected when they sent the email?

quote:

outlook express

:stonk:

What is your environment like? What version of Exchange? If you're using POP/IMAP, you should have protocol logging turned on for those protocols, which would give you an idea of what is going on there.

Papercut
Aug 24, 2005

The quickest substitution in the history of the NBA

incoherent posted:

The problem with public folders is microsoft shitted on the concept, stagnated on features, declared it dead, declared it undead , and gave it legitimate first class scalable technology update in 2013/o365. 2007 and 2010 had to drag 2003 concepts of high availability public folders around like an albatross when the mailbox databases got really useful cluster and HA features. (Fun fact: "migrating public folders" is an anagram for gently caress THIS poo poo)

You're going to have a much better experience with features that public folder had in a legit sharepoint online instance. Even moving back and forth from o365 and sharepoint is a seamless process. Take ownership of that hellish 2007/2010 setup, put two bucks in that thing, and get everyone to the cloud.

And this is from a dude who admins a onprem.

Gyshall posted:

Shared Mailboxes are still hands down better than public folders, imo.

Thanks for the replies. I definitely think O365 is going to be the way we go once I can convince everyone to retire our server, but I will give shared mailboxes a try in the meantime.

e: oh good news, discovered that this server is running Windows Server 2003, which is losing official support in July. That means I get to force the office into a better setup.

Papercut fucked around with this message at 18:30 on Jan 9, 2015

Spudalicious
Dec 24, 2003

I <3 Alton Brown.

Gyshall posted:

:stonk:

What is your environment like? What version of Exchange? If you're using POP/IMAP, you should have protocol logging turned on for those protocols, which would give you an idea of what is going on there.

Hahaha, we don't have any sort of systems management, it's sort of a BYOD minus any sort of management systems (people buy whatever on grant $$$, then get mad at us for not being able to support infinity++ platforms). We are a 2 man shop so it's about as bad as you can expect. We're running exchange 2010, and allowing pop/imap because Very Important People bitched about it enough that we were told to do this. I've enabled protocol logging for those protocols now, but since it wasn't enabled before, I'm a bit at a loss here. Note that IANAEA (I am not an email admin) so I don't know much about it, and I'm going to attend a meeting today to explain why we should outsource email altogether since we're a nonprofit and can get free gmail.

Looking at these IMAP/POP logs is not fun. Is there a popular tool that makes it a bit more reasonable?

incoherent
Apr 24, 2004

01010100011010000111001
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000110010101110010
That does sound sensible. However A VERY BIG WORD OF WARNING: you're getting a free service and I would begin to set expectations that while this is an amazing free service support will be limited to non-existent.

In other words: you're getting what you paid for.

Spudalicious
Dec 24, 2003

I <3 Alton Brown.

incoherent posted:

That does sound sensible. However A VERY BIG WORD OF WARNING: you're getting a free service and I would begin to set expectations that while this is an amazing free service support will be limited to non-existent.

In other words: you're getting what you paid for.

That's a fair point. I pitched it well enough that those present got on board the cloud train. Now to find some selection criteria and a list of candidates. I can't wait to uninstall exchange :D

Gozinbulx
Feb 19, 2004
Hey guys, im pretty much ready to throw my exchange server into the ocean. Way too many problems and so many vital business communications not reaching people in time/at all. I need something hosted/cloud/set it forget it.

What do you guys recommend for someone who wants to be done with managing their own mail system, but keep their domain name at the end of the address?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I think it's pretty much Office 365, or a Rackspace-equivalent offering which will always be behind the curve and cost more.

Google Apps is great if you're not coming from a background of Exchange features and users for whom email = Outlook. It's not worth the struggle otherwise.

Maneki Neko
Oct 27, 2000

Gozinbulx posted:

Hey guys, im pretty much ready to throw my exchange server into the ocean. Way too many problems and so many vital business communications not reaching people in time/at all. I need something hosted/cloud/set it forget it.

What do you guys recommend for someone who wants to be done with managing their own mail system, but keep their domain name at the end of the address?

For a business? Honestly Office 365 isn't so bad (it does randomly die from time to time) as its pretty seamless for people coming from Exchange.

Google Apps is a bit more reliable, but there seems a higher chance of people getting cranky if they've used Exchange/Outlook for a bazillion years and don't want to learn anything new.

There's a bunch of other hosted exchange providers, but honestly Office 365 is getting cheap enough that I'd be hard pressed to look at anything else.

rotaryfun
Jun 30, 2008

you can be my wingman anytime

Maneki Neko posted:

For a business? Honestly Office 365 isn't so bad (it does randomly die from time to time) as its pretty seamless for people coming from Exchange.

Google Apps is a bit more reliable, but there seems a higher chance of people getting cranky if they've used Exchange/Outlook for a bazillion years and don't want to learn anything new.

There's a bunch of other hosted exchange providers, but honestly Office 365 is getting cheap enough that I'd be hard pressed to look at anything else.

We have a newly updated 2013 environment with a DAG in place between two locations, with < 180 employees. At what point does it become just a smart decision to move to office 365?

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


It's a difficult one to say exactly where the point is that you move email to something like Office 365. If you need your server infrastructure, Windows CALs, redundant fibre links, backup generators, failover datacentre etc. for the other things your business does, then the added cost to also use that for your email is minimal. If you have an environment which you'd consider 'at risk' and politically are able to move to 365 then it makes a lot of sense. It gives you a lot more control than it used to, and is maturing nicely.

It's going to be difficult to work out but you need a ballpark of how much it's costing you annually to keep Exchange on-site in terms of services that you pay for that you wouldn't need if your email wasn't on-prem, storage and backup capacity that you wouldn't need to add each year etc., and see if the costs of Office 365 make sense.

Thanks Ants fucked around with this message at 21:49 on Jan 13, 2015

Maneki Neko
Oct 27, 2000

rotaryfun posted:

We have a newly updated 2013 environment with a DAG in place between two locations, with < 180 employees. At what point does it become just a smart decision to move to office 365?

I think that's generally more of a organization by organization question. Some organization are fine spending a big chunk of capital every 3-4 years and riding that, while some would rather move that all to operating budgets. Not saying you can't do Office 365 with either model, but if you just spent a ton of $$$ updating your on-prem environment it may be hard politically to get the approval for Office 365 subscriptions.

On the other hand, if you're looking at rolling out Lync or Sharepoint, or it's time to resign that EA or renew software assurance licenses, it may be an easy thing to push.

rotaryfun
Jun 30, 2008

you can be my wingman anytime

Maneki Neko posted:

Not saying you can't do Office 365 with either model, but if you just spent a ton of $$$ updating your on-prem environment it may be hard politically to get the approval for Office 365 subscriptions.

Yeah, we did. And we have typically upgraded versions whenever our server is basically out of warranty and Dell will no longer extend it. That has worked for us and it hasn't seemed to ruffle any of the accounting departments feathers. So we're at about a 5 - 6 year cycle. I'd certainly not push for it anytime within the next 2 or 3 years but I could see it becoming something that we'd want to look at for the next go around.

We aren't unhappy with the setup at all but I loathe the fact that they got rid of the EMC and went to a web based management solution. But, it's really my own fault that I have to deal with it since I haven't taken the time to really learn powershell.

I think we're pretty fortunate though because we've been able to manage to keep the exchange db to less than 17 gigs and haven't really let the db get out of hand.

rotaryfun fucked around with this message at 21:59 on Jan 13, 2015

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


To be honest in a couple of years 365 will be more than ready for whatever you need it for. 17GB is easily doable as well.

Exchange Online works nicely with Powershell, and the web UI keeps improving all the time. For example you can finally convert a user mailbox into a shared one without having to use Powershell to do it.

Gozinbulx
Feb 19, 2004
I *think* we'd be totally fine with GApps, especially since most peoples personal emails are Gmail already. I was just afraid it was considered a bad service by experts/people who should know this stuff. It's not? It's well regarded among you guys?

Internet Explorer
Jun 1, 2005





I haven't used it personally but from its reputation it's just fine. You should expect less than a day or two of downtime a year, including off-peak hours.

Thanks Ants
May 21, 2004

#essereFerrari


I've had zero problems with Google Apps that couldn't be put in the "it's not Outlook/Exchange" category. It's different and there's no getting away from that. Do not let people use Apps Sync for Outlook though, it's horrible.

skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

You have to run the numbers to see if O365 is worth it to your org or not.

Back when we were ~1100 people and we first went to BPOS Online, 3 years of hosted BPOS from Microsoft was less than the CapEx requirements to implement our own Exchange 2007 clusters. I think we were looking at 500K for that project.

We've grown and been acquired and now sit at around 3800 users on Office365, I could definitely do it in house for less than what we pay, but upper management still likes O365. Especially with Exchange 2013 not needing as insane hardware as previous versions

OpEx vs CapEx is easier to deal with on the budget
It's easier to bill per user to each dept
We've moved to E3 licenses so our Office licenses are rolled into a monthly cost per user. We no longer have to track Office licenses and make sure our EA is trued up.

While I don't think the actual Exchange portion is any easier or more difficult to manage in O365 than on premise, not having to deal with Spam, backups, all the other crap that comes with hosting your own email is nice. O365 having Lync, Sharepoint and OneDrive available is nice as well.

Oscar Wilde Bunch
Jun 12, 2012

Grimey Drawer

skipdogg posted:

You have to run the numbers to see if O365 is worth it to your org or not.

Back when we were ~1100 people and we first went to BPOS Online, 3 years of hosted BPOS from Microsoft was less than the CapEx requirements to implement our own Exchange 2007 clusters. I think we were looking at 500K for that project.

We've grown and been acquired and now sit at around 3800 users on Office365, I could definitely do it in house for less than what we pay, but upper management still likes O365. Especially with Exchange 2013 not needing as insane hardware as previous versions

OpEx vs CapEx is easier to deal with on the budget
It's easier to bill per user to each dept
We've moved to E3 licenses so our Office licenses are rolled into a monthly cost per user. We no longer have to track Office licenses and make sure our EA is trued up.

While I don't think the actual Exchange portion is any easier or more difficult to manage in O365 than on premise, not having to deal with Spam, backups, all the other crap that comes with hosting your own email is nice. O365 having Lync, Sharepoint and OneDrive available is nice as well.

Apparently Lync is supposed to be getting some big upgrades this year, in the form of Microsoft having their own voice/video/conference system in place. If you want to go big into Lync, you won't have to have a 3rd party conference provider anymore.

skipdogg
Nov 29, 2004
Resident SRT-4 Expert

I know they're renaming it to Skype for Business or something.

We got rid of WebEx when Lync 2013 came out, and use AT&T for voice conferences right now. I know the phone guy is looking at some new phone system that will integrate with Lync, we're on some older Avaya TDM stuff right now.

vyst
Aug 25, 2009



Iron Tusk posted:

Apparently Lync is supposed to be getting some big upgrades this year, in the form of Microsoft having their own voice/video/conference system in place. If you want to go big into Lync, you won't have to have a 3rd party conference provider anymore.

Lync is becoming Skype for business this year sometime.

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Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD
maybe one day Lync will not be garbage

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