Windows Mobile 6 Ringtones

Quick Tip here. If you want to add your own music file as a Ring tone on your Windows Mobile 6 phone, connect the phone to your computer and browse to "My Windows Mobile-Based Device -> Application Data -> Sounds" and drop it in there. After that, on your device go to "Start -> Settings -> Sounds & Notifications -> Notifications" and select the "Ring tone:" that you just copied to your device from the drop-down list.

Managed Default Folders in Exchange 2007

Question:
How do I automatically purge items older than 30 days in the Inbox, Sent Items, and Deleted Items folders in Exchange 2007?

Answer:
There are actually four steps to set this up. They can all be done from PowerShell, which is awesome, but they can also be done through the Exchange Management Console. I'll cover both methods.

Step 1 - New Managed Content Settings
In Exchange Management Console, select Microsoft Exchange -> Organization Configuration -> Mailbox -> Managed Default Folders. From here, select each folder you wish to create Managed Content Settings (read: retention/journaling policies) and click "New Managed Content Settings..." from the Actions menu on the right.

Step 2 - New Managed Folder Mailbox Policy
Now skip over to the Managed Folder Mailbox Policies tab. Click "New Managed Folder Mailbox Policy" and Add the folders you want to group together. This grouping is important because you can only apply one "Policy" to a given user.

In practice this means if I want my retention settings for Inbox and Sent Items that I set up in Step 1 to apply to USER1, I need to add both of those folders to one Policy. If I want the retention settings for Sent Items and Deleted Items to apply to USER2 and USER3, I need to add both of those folders to another Policy.

Step 3 - Messaging Records Management - Recipient Configuration
Still on Exchange Management Console, drill down to Microsoft Exchange -> Recipient Configuration -> Mailbox and double-click on a user. Go to the Mailbox Settings tab on the user Properties window and double click on "Messaging Records Managment". Here you need to select a Managed folder mailbox policy (you created this in Step 2) for this user.

Here's where I reccomend using PowerShell if you have more than a few users to assign this policy to. PowerShell script example coming tomorrow.

Step 4 - Messaging Records Management - Server Configuration
Finally, drill down to Microsoft Exchange -> Server Configuration -> Mailbox and double-click on a Mailbox Server. Go to the Messaging Records Management tab and create a Custom Schedule when to apply the Policy.

Think of this as a scheduled task with a "Stop the task if it runs for X hour(s) X minute(s)." The only difference is that this scheduled task picks up where it left off when it stopped. So, if I schedule it to run at 12AM for one hour each night and it doesn't finish processing through all the mailboxes it is assigned to, it will continue at 12AM on Monday.

One final note, you should do this during light usage hours because this can be intensive on your Exchange Servers and Outlook (think synchronization, especially on the initail run).

That's pretty much it. For more details and PowerShell commands from Microsoft, take a look here (remember it's technet so Internet Exporer or IE emulation will give you a "better" view):
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123548(EXCHG.80).aspx

Good luck!

CubeTree

We're about to do an internal soft launch of CubeTree at my office. I'm excited but busy. More to come on the MPS fun from last week and more to come about CubeTree shortly.

And then there was MPS...

So, eight months later...

I've had an exciting eight months. I have successfully made the transition from education to the private sector and things move at a pretty fast pace here. It's fairly obvious that I haven't had any time to blog for a long time. Now I'm hoping that I'll have at least a moment here and there to blog so this seems as good a time as any to start again. Having said all that...

I'm taking a class for the next four days on MPS, that is the Microsoft Provisioning System leveraged by Microsoft's Hosted Messaging and Collaboration product. Never heard of it? That's not surprising. If you're interested at all, as far as I can tell there are only a handful of people that actively use this product and we all post on this relatively dead message board:

http://forums.asp.net/default.aspx?ForumGroupID=29

Specifically, I troll around the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Exchange board there. Anyway, useful bits of information and my general insights soon to come...