Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

Right after i got my new iPAQ 510 Voice Messenger, our chief sales was looking for a new mobile phone (mostly because there was no longer a sync software for the Sony P910 under Windows Vista). As i’m fine with any mobile phone as long as it is running Windows Mobile 6, as these offer superior synchronization to Exchange using Exchange ActiveSync. Even Push-Email is supported since WM5+MSFP using Microsoft’s DirectPush.

In the end, the choice fell on the HTC TOUCH. It runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional (aka “PDA Phone Edition”), this means it uses the PDA UI, not the SmartPhone UI.

The packaging provided by HTC was very nice, in a sleek black box that comes with everything you need. A USB cable with the usual mini-USB connector (no idea on how this thing is really called), stereo headphones, a 1GB Mini-SD card and a USB charger cable.

Again, setting up the device was a breeze, it automatically configured the necessary GPRS settings. After downloading our self-signed certificate and installing it, the Phone already synced against the Exchange server. No need to plug it into any computer. (Many WM5 modems back in the days required a variety of registry hacks in order to import new trusted certificates – it’s very good to see that this has changed).

I’ve also installed version of Windows Mobile Device Center on the laptop, in order to sync files and notes (You can’t sync Outlook notes over the air, i’d like to see the design decision behind this one). WMDC works fine and integrates completely into the OS. While the ActiveSync desktop software under Windows XP was mostly troublefree when used with Exchange ActiveSync, the WMDC software works even better.

Back to the device itself. The HTC Touch is often touted as an iPhone competitor, but it’s not. They play in whole different areas. The iPhone is a consumer device – it does not offer Enterprise Messaging features like a Blackberry Connectivity Software or Exchange Active Sync. The HTC Touch is meant for professionals which need the ability to synchronize with an enterprise messaging system over-the-air, including contacts, calender, etc.

The HTC Touch has a 2.8″ 320×240 screen. The resolution is acceptable, but i would’ve preferred 640×480 pixels at the same screen size. (I really liked the 2″ 240×320 screen on my HTC MTeoR). The device is much, much smaller than it appears on photos. It’s also much thinner – in fact, it’s the first Windows Mobile device that doesn’t look like a Windows Mobile device (which can usually be described as “bulky”. As such, i think the HTC Touch is very important for the Windows Mobile marketplace.

The Touch has an alternative shell called TouchFLO – it’s a homescreen replacement with support for a few gestures, a program launcher, and a music player. The TouchFLO functionality is nice to use, but it is not a full Windows Mobile touchscreen conversion. As such, the functionality is very, very limited. There’s a standard pen located in the phone’s corner, like with every other PDA. You’ll need this to use much of the functionality. You can place calls with just the touchscreen alone, and the touchscreen seems to implemented very well. It even works beyond the edges of integrated 320×240 screen, which makes using your finger to point at things on the side much, much easier.

There’s an included ZIP-Software and Adobe Reader LE is preinstalled, and there is not much “vendor crap” as i’ve seen on operator branded HTC devices. As such, i see little reason not to recommend this device – the build is very nice, the screen and other hardware components also work as they should. They only points that could be criticized are the screen resolution (which is “normal PDA” resolution instead of “hires PDA”), and the missing UMTS support which only plays a role when surfing the Web or connecting to the Web with a laptop. For EAS purposes, EDGE is enough.

In my opinion, the HTC TOUCH is a very cool Windows Mobile 6 device, thats shows a lot of the progress needed in this sector. Together with the Motorola Q9h (Review from a co-worker), i would vote these two to be the two best available Windows Mobile 6 devices on the market. The TOUCH is better if you want a full fledged PDA with a touchscreen, while the Q9h is a true Smartphone with a full keyboard.

About a month ago, i’ve passed exam 70-237. A few days ago, the last exam of the the MCITP: Microsoft Exchange 2007 Messaging Solutions Administrator series (not yet on the MS websites) was released – that is exam 70-238.

I noticed this on Saturday, and booked a testing appointment for today. I arrived almost late at the testing center, because a customer appointment took longer than i thought (that’ll teach me to book exams in the afternoon). Another bonus was that it is quite hot today (32C according to my car), and the A/C in the testing center has failed or was overloaded – in fact, it was almost cooler outside the building. I was offered to move my testing appointment, but i didn’t want to.

70-237 was easy as pie, and mostly theoretical questions on “how should you do this”. 70-236 required you to learn vast PowerShell commands to be able to pick the right one from the answers given.

70-238 was completely different, and much more technical than 70-237. A very large focus were backup, backup windows, recovery methodologies, migrations from older Exchange versions, migrations from/to clustered mailbox servers, and lots of questions about journalling, mailbox and transport rules, and Send and Receive connectors. Most of the questions focused on where you have to set rules, i.E. Hub or Edge server. This is usually pretty easy, but there were a few cases where the solution wasn’t obvious.

A bit of material was the same as in 70-237 (not word for word, but in the type of questions) – focusing on which rules you need for what. A few other questions centered around Active Directory, and the requirements Exchange has for it.

There were also questions which i found completely irrelevant – at least 3 questions focused on MOM and what you should do to configure it with Exchange. I never used MOM, so i used all my guessing skills.

In the end a passed with around 850 points, i expected much worse than that. I didn’t even have bars that we’re below the (imaginary) 80% margin, even though i don’t think i understood all the Journalling/Transport/Managed folder stuff completely.

So now i should be a MCITP: Microsoft Exchange 2007 Messaging Solutions Administrator, as long as Microsoft doesn’t have the same troubles they had with the MCSA and 70-620.

Update: Updating the transcript wasn’t a problem this time, the credentials were visible a day after i passed this exam.

Today i’ve passed Microsoft exam 70-237, Designing Messaging Solutions with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007.

I didn’t spend too much time preparing for this one, mostly because i wasn’t able to find many referneces on the web related to this exam. This is also why i decided to write this post.

While the 70-236 exam was clearly focused on the technology itself, with many EMS and EMC questions, this exam tested the other half you need to know.

Basically, what Microsoft shuffled into on Exam in the Windows Server 2003 series (70-290, et. al.) is now split into two or more exams – one focused on the handling the technology in detail, and others handling the planning and limitations of the product. This is already explained on the New Generation of Microsoft Certificates page, it’s amazing how this worked out in practice. I really do like this approach, as it makes it easier to prepare for an exam.

I found the 70-237 way easier than the technical exam 70-236, mostly owed to the fact that when knowing all the base rules of Exchange 2007 deployment, you will have a lot of questions in 70-237 covered. But other topics also get their share, like Message Management, Auditing, Archival. None of them to deep. I even got a single question about Unified Messaging, which was not the case in the previous exam.

I honestly didn’t really learn for this exam – i’ve read How to Cheat at Configuring Exchange Server 2007 about a month earlier, but didn’t do anything else.

Now i’ll have to wait till 70-238 is out to complete my Exchange 2007 certification.

As part of a “security cleanup”, someone removed IIS from his Small Business Server 2000. The result was, well, obvious. Exchange stopped working. He reinstalled IIS, but Exchange still wasn’t working.

Luckily, Microsoft already knows what you have to do:
How to remove and to reinstall IIS on a computer that is running Exchange Server.

As usual, Microsoft KB entries aren’t very reassuring when it comes to “what data will i loose when i do this”. Don’t be concerned, reinstalling Exchange will not hurt your data in any way, if you follow the manual to the letter.

How to Cheat at Configuring Exchange Server 2007 is the book i’m reading right now, preparing myself for the first Exchange 2007 deployment that is going to come.

So far i’m through the first three chapters, and i think it’s pretty good so far. I’ve setup a few Exchange 2007 testing environments before, but i never did anything serious with it.

If you’re running Outlook 2007 against an Exchange 2003 server, and have alerts generated by Sharepoint Services 3.0, you will notice very strange effects within Outlook, namely MAPI Error messages, mails that are not openable, etc.

The problem is a bug in Exchange 2003 – there is even a hotfix available in KB930807. However, this Hotfix is not publicly downloadable. You will need to contact Microsoft PSS, in order to get the Hotfix.

And here is where it gets interesting. If you’re running a native language version of your Microsoft Software, Support is only available by phone, for the small sum of 450 US$ – this fee is usually waived though if you just request a hotfix. For original US-English language software, support is also available by E-Mail, for much more reasonable 150 US$.

I’ve tried requesting the Hotfix by E-Mail, and it worked fine (though they referred me to the Phone Support option). It worked fine, and Microsoft provided me with the appropriate Hotfix.

The good thing is, that these problems will be mostly over because both Vista and Longhorn Server are true multilanguage Operating Systems.

Recovering deleted items in Outlook 2003/2007 works great.

However, some users reported that not all deleted items were visible in the “Recover deleted items” dialog. The reason for this was that they didn’t just delete the file, but instead used shift-delete to delete the file immediately, skipping the recycle bin.

In this case, the deleted item is not visible through selecting the recycle bin, and then “Recover deleted items”. Instead, you must select the Inbox, and then the “Recover deleted items” option. This is not as obvious as it should be.

I’ve spent the entire day at the Kongresshaus Zürich, attending Microsoft TechDays 2007.

In general, i enjoyed this first part of the event. As always, the Kongresshaus has severe logistical problems, they don’t have enough parking space. Microsoft offered free parking at Albisgüetli, but that is about 15 minutes away.

So instead i choose to go early, and parked right next to the Kongresshaus – arrived at 08:15, and there was still plenty of parking space available. At 27.- CHF for the entire day, it didn’t come cheap, though.

Microsoft seems to have moved back from stickers to lanyards, and there were croissons available in the morning.

The Keynote was very good, held by a guy named Rafal Lukawiecki. A review on security in the past, and in the future. Very interesting, and very well done.

The next on the list was about Windows Sharepoint Services, but aimed at developers (which i didn’t really pay attention too, when choosing). Even though i’m not a developer, it was very interesting to see the architecture behind WSS.

I then attended a talk about Exchange HA & Disaster Recovery – i enjoyed this one too, but i think the title was a bit misleading, it concentrated on backups and reasons for disasters.

It was interesting to hear that he saw incorrectly configured anti virus software as the main reason for exchange full restore – i couldn’t really believe this, because it didn’t look like this guy worked with Small Businesses. He even wrote an Article about this topic on msexchange.org. While listening, i enjoyed that it seems i did everything right in the setups i did in the past, which was very reassuring.

Next was something about Windows Storage Server, or file serving from windows in general. It was very well, with a very competent speaker. It was also interesting to see that Microsoft is entering the Backup Market with DPM – at competitive prices, even though DPM requires a seperate server, which is a bit of a letdown. DFS/DFS-R was also covered very well, though there wasn’t anything there new to me.

What i wondered was that it seems that even though most people attending TechDays aren’t exacly working in SMBs didn’t know much about DFS. I assumed that most bigger companies were already using this.

At that point, i called it a day and went home. Stay tuned for the next part.

After migrating several users into our Exchange server, which were first defined as an external contacts (for proper forwarding), everything worked fine.

However, one user was unable to send mail to the new users. It generated a bounce/NDA, and failed to deliver. I first checked the Exchange Server, and everything seemed to be perfect. I then walked this user through the procedure of selecting the user from the address book, and then sending the mail. This worked.

At first, i was baffled, but then i remembered about the external contacts – the external contacts where defined as X.400 addresses, which coexisted with the new users for a short while. so the external contacts had different X.400 addresses than the new users. (I did handle the SMTP Addresses correctly, but not the X.400 ones).

But the external contacts where deleted, and no longer in the GAL or the OAB. But Outlooks address cache for type-ahead finding of contacts is independent of these two address sources. And that’s what the user used. You can delete entries in this cache by selecting them with the cursor keys, and then pressing the delete key. Seems logical, but i haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere explicitly.

I recently ran into an interesting problem related to Active Sync and Cached Exchange Mode in Outlook 2003.

In this case, the user running Outlook 2003 was connected to the exchange server through a WAN link, and has just imported a rather large .pst file, which was being uploaded to the Exchange server.

At that point, i tried to configure Active Sync on the PDA (through a GPRS connection), but it just hung while retrieving the folder list. An Event from Source “Server ActiveSync” and ID 3005 was logged on the Exchange-Server. At first, i thought the device (running PocketPC 3.0) had issues with the Exchange server, but that wasn’t the case. When i quit Outlook (and it stopped uploading from the local store to the server), everything was fine.

I waited until Outlook finished uploading, and from that point on Active Sync didn’t have any issues.

It seems that Active Sync doesn’t work when the Exchange Server is receiving files from a client.