ExMS 2.5

Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 is a complex messaging platform that requires administration at many levels, ranging from routine chores, such as creating mailboxes, to more demanding responsibilities, such as capacity planning and monitoring. Managing tiered administrative permissions is a difficult endeavor in Exchange Server 5.5; as a result, delegating these administrative responsibilities to the appropriate person is a challenge. However, without a tiered system, you must choose between letting your organization's highly paid Exchange Server administrators be inundated by daily maintenance requests and expanding your Exchange Server administrative group to include staff members who have minimal technical skills and training. Discus Data Solutions claims to address this situation and other Exchange Server administrative problems in ExMS 2.5.

How It Works
ExMS's architecture consists of two parts: Messaging API (MAPI) forms that provide the interface you use to modify the Exchange Server databases, and the specialized ExMS mailbox agents that reside on the Exchange Server system and perform the tasks you specify through the MAPI forms. These mailbox agents run under an Exchange Server administrative account, acting as proxies between Exchange server and the users you delegate to perform maintenance tasks. These users don't need to have administrative privileges on the Exchange Server system; instead, ExMS lets them rely on lower-level permissions to access the forms they need to do their jobs.

The software has four components that represent the four mailbox agents it installs on an Exchange Server system: ExMS Account Creator, ExMS Account Updater, ExMS Account Deleter, and ExMS Directory Integrity Agent. ExMS runs these mailbox agents as Windows 2000 or Windows NT services and represents them as special mailboxes in the Microsoft Exchange Administrator interface, as Figure 1 shows. You use these agents to create, delete, and update information in the Exchange directory database. Directory Integrity Agent lets you maintain your Exchange directory database and synchronize portions of this database with other databases in your organization.

ExMS comes on a CD-ROM along with a 145-page manual, which provides spotty documentation. Within its five sections, I found detailed and well-written sections next to areas that provided sparse information. For example, the manual provided no apparent mention of which server you should install ExMS on. I found the answer on Discus Data Solutions' Web site, then stumbled across this information later in the manual. In addition, the manual didn't include a section about how to troubleshoot problems with the software. On at least two occasions, a troubleshooting section would have saved me a call to the company's technical support staff. Finally, an index or quick-reference section would have helped me better navigate the manual.

Installation
To test ExMS, I used a small test network of eight PCs that included a mix of servers and workstations. On one of the workstations, a Dell Precision Work-station, I installed NT 4.0 Service Pack 5 (SP5) and Exchange Server. ExMS runs on both Win2K and NT, and you can install the software on the Exchange Server system or on a separate server.

After I inserted the CD-ROM, the setup wizard began and checked for prerequisite components, including Collaboration Data Objects (CDO), HTML Help, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), and Active Directory Service Interfaces (ADSI). ExMS uses ADSI for the software's Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) services to provide compatibility with Active Directory (AD). The wizard successfully installed these components, then prompted me for the Exchange Server system's name and the container in which to install the ExMS mailbox agents. The wizard then requested an NT account that had Exchange Server administrative privileges as well as Log on as a Service and Act as part of the Operating System rights under NT. I created this account and assigned it to the ExMS services. Setup then installed the ExMS forms in the default Microsoft Outlook profile's personal forms library, and installation was complete.

However, when I launched Exchange Administrator, I ran into trouble. The window displayed the four ExMS components as stopped, and the components failed when I attempted to start them. The documentation offered no help, so I called Discus Data Solutions' technical support staff. With their help, I discovered that setup hadn't correctly registered the ExMS services. To correct this problem, I added to the registry the necessary entries for the services.

Next, I discovered that I had mistakenly granted the administrator role to the ExMS service account at the organization level only. To rectify this error, I opened Exchange Administrator and assigned the Service Account Administrator role, which includes logon rights, to the ExMS service account at the Site and Configuration levels. After taking these steps, I was able to begin configuring the software's services.

Configuration
To set each service's properties, I highlighted the service and clicked the properties toolbar button from the ExMS Administrator GUI. In the resulting properties window, you can set the service start parameters and specify the NT account under which the service will run. By default, the services are set to start manually.

Double-clicking any of the ExMS components in the ExMS Administrator window brings up the component's configuration dialog box. In this window, you can specify configuration items such as the Exchange Server and recipients container in which the mailbox agents will reside, the interval at which the agents check for change requests, and options for sending email notifications of changes. Figure 2 shows the Account Creator Configuration dialog box. In this window, you can configure the Account Creator to create an NT account concurrently with the creation of an Exchange mailbox. (The Account Creator mailbox agent logon account must be a member of the Domain Administrators group.)

Before I could test the software, I had to set the appropriate rights on the Exchange Server system and configure access to the ExMS forms. By default, ExMS installs the forms in the personal forms library of the default Outlook profile on the system on which you installed ExMS. To provide more general access to the forms, you can move them to the Organizational Forms Library on the Exchange Server system or to a public folder. I created a public folder for the forms library because a public folder provides the most flexible means for assigning access controls.

Next, you need to determine the delegates who will perform Exchange Server maintenance tasks, provide them access to the forms, and give them Modify User Attribute rights for the appropriate recipients container. These rights are necessary to let the delegates use the Account Updater to update the Exchange Server directory database.

Finally, you manage ExMS security by setting permissions on your forms library to let only the appropriate delegates access it. In addition, you set standard Exchange Server delivery restrictions on the ExMS agent mailboxes to exclude everyone but the appropriate delegates. The only exception to this setup is if you want everyone in your organization to be able to update his or her Exchange Server account information, in which case you need to lift the delivery restrictions on the Account Updater mailbox.

Testing
After I completed the services' configurations, I began testing the Account Creator, Account Updater, and Account Deleter by using delegate accounts to log on to the network. From each account, I launched Outlook, navigated to the forms library public folder that I had created, clicked the Actions drop-down menu, and chose one of the five available forms. The only hitch I ran into was that I needed to install Expression Services from the Outlook 98 installation CD-ROM on Outlook 98 clients to make the forms work. The Outlook 2000 clients worked without a problem.

Distribution list (DL) forms let me create new DLs or modify existing lists. The Create Distribution List form worked well for creating short DLs but often failed at creating lists that included more than 1000 users. When the creation failed, I received an email notification that the software successfully created the DL, but the list was actually empty.

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