Creating a new mailbox with EAC is easy. Open Recipients,
select Mailboxes, and click the + (plus) sign to expose the dialog box
to collect details about the new mailbox (Figure 1). Exchange 2013 supports the following mailbox types:
User mailboxes. The
standard full-function mailboxes used by people to send and receive
email and work with calendar, contacts, and other mail-enabled
applications. User mailboxes can be associated with archive mailboxes
to provide secondary longer-term storage.
Linked mailboxes. Mailboxes that are linked to a user account in a separate, trusted forest.
Shared mailboxes. Mailboxes
that are accessed by multiple users who share a need to work with
common information such as messages, calendars, and tasks; for example,
the members of a project team.
Room mailboxes. Mailboxes that represent conference rooms so that users can book them for meetings through calendar requests.
Resource or equipment mailboxes. Mailboxes
that represent other items of equipment (such as projectors,
communication equipment, or whiteboards) that users might need to
reserve for a meeting.
Discovery mailboxes. Mailboxes
that are used to store items copied as the result of eDiscovery
searches.
Exchange 2013 also supports public folder and site mailboxes.
Public folder mailboxes can be created through the public folder
section of EAC, but you cannot create site mailboxes through EAC
because they are created in SharePoint 2013 as part of the process of
setting up a site. As for the other types, EAC groups user and linked
mailboxes under Mailboxes and room and resource mailboxes under
Resources.
The fields presented to create a new mailbox are:
Alias. This
value doesn’t have to be unique, but it should be. There’s no way to
request EAC to determine whether an alias is unique; you have to do
this yourself before attempting to create a mailbox. Exchange enables
you to input an alias that already exists for an object, but this is
bad practice because subsequent requests to find mailboxes might return
multiple objects. If a mailbox is to be created for an existing user,
you can select from the list of Windows accounts that are not already
associated with an Exchange mailbox.
First name. The user’s given name.
Initials. Any initials for the user, if they exist.
Last name. The user’s surname.
Display name. By
default, EAC creates a display name from the user’s first name, a
space, and the user’s surname. This is fine if you want the GAL to be
organized using this order. If you want to use a different order or to
add some information to help users identify people in the GAL, you have
to overwrite the display name with your preferred value.
Organizational unit. If
left blank, EAC creates the new user account in the Users
organizational unit (OU). Unless you operate a very small organization,
it is much better if all your user accounts are not created in a single
OU but rather divided into easy-to-manage units.
User login name. This
value is used to create the UPN, Windows Standby Active Manager (SAM)
account name, and primary SMTP address for the new mailbox, and it must
be unique. It is recommended for the UPN to be the same as the primary
SMTP email address for the mailbox.
Password. EAC
requires you to set a password for the new Windows account and confirm
the value by retyping it. You can also decide whether the user should
reset his password when he first logs on.
Below the password information, you see More Options. This exposes fields for:
Mailbox database. You
can decide to create the new mailbox in a specific database. If you
don’t, Exchange selects a database from any of the set available for
auto-provisioning.
Archive. You
can assign an archive mailbox to the new mailbox and select the
database within which the archive mailbox is created. Note that archive
mailboxes require an enterprise CAL.
Address book policy. You
can select from available address book policies and assign one to the
mailbox if the user is subject to a customized address book policy that
allows her to see only a subset of the overall GAL.
It’s
obvious that the foregoing covers only a small proportion of the
available properties that you can set to configure a new mailbox to
meet your exact requirements. After the new mailbox is created, you can
edit its properties to fit before handing the new mailbox over to its
user.
The most common problems administrators encounter when they attempt to create mailboxes with EAC are the following:
Failure
to provide a password for a new account that meets Windows
requirements. If you enter a password that does not meet the policy
implemented for Windows (for example, it contains the name of the
user), EAC flags the error “The value provided for the new password
does not meet the length, complexity, or history requirements of the
domain” and will not be able to proceed to create the new mailbox.
Inadvertent
selection of features that require an enterprise CAL. Assigning a
feature such as an archive mailbox increases the number of enterprise
CALs your organization requires. EAC indicates whenever a feature
requires enterprise CALs, but this information is often overlooked by
stressed administrators who are focusing on the task at hand rather
than reading all the text presented on screen, so the subsequent
increase in Exchange client license fees might come as an unpleasant
surprise at some point in the future.
Setting up
mailboxes by entering values through EAC is easy if you have only a few
mailboxes to create. When the load increases, it’s time to master the
intricacies of the cmdlets that are used, especially if you need to
integrate mailbox creation with another process, such as that used by
the HR department to introduce a new employee to the company. Some
prototype code that creates a new mailbox with a new Windows account is
shown next. Table 1
lists the most common parameters to use when creating a new user
mailbox complete with a Windows account. As you see later, other types,
such as room and equipment mailboxes, use different parameters:
Table 1. Properties used to create a new mailbox with New-Mailbox
Property | Use | Mandatory |
|---|
Name | Name of the mailbox. | N |
Alias | Unique identifier for the mailbox. This value can contain no special characters. | Y |
UserPrincipalName | UPN; an identifier for the mailbox in SMTP format. | Y |
FirstName | First name for the mailbox owner. | N |
Initials | Initials for the mailbox owner. | N |
LastName | Surname for the mailbox owner. | N |
DisplayName | Display
name for the mailbox as used in the GAL and message header. If omitted,
Exchange creates a display name based on the language used to run EAC.
For example, English language variants of EAC create display names from
the first name and last name. | N |
Password | Password for the Windows account. If omitted, Exchange prompts for a password for the new account. | Y |
ResetPasswordOnNextLogon | Flag to indicate whether user will be forced to reset his Windows password the next time he logs on. | Y |
Database | Database in which the new mailbox will be created. | N |
OrganizationalUnit | Active Directory OU in which to create the new Windows account. If omitted, Exchange uses the default OU. | N |
ActiveSyncMailboxPolicy | Name of the ActiveSync policy to apply to the new mailbox. If omitted, Exchange applies the default ActiveSync policy. | N |
Archive | Flag to indicate whether an archive mailbox is created. | N |
ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy | Name of the Managed Folder policy to apply to the mailbox. | N |
New-Mailbox -Name 'Rich Haddock' -Alias 'HaddockR' -UserPrincipalName 'Rich.Haddock@contoso.com' -SamAccountName 'HaddockR' -FirstName 'Rich'
-Initials 'J' -LastName 'Haddock' -Password (ConvertTo-SecureString 'Exchange2013!' –AsPlainText –Force) -ResetPasswordOnNextLogon $True -Database 'DB1' –DisplayName 'Haddock, Rich (Sales)' –OrganizationalUnit 'contoso.com/Exchange Users'
Creating
a mailbox is only the start of the process of building a mailbox that
is fully ready to use. The code that you’ve just viewed doesn’t exploit
the ability to assign special mailbox quotas, set up moderation for the
mailbox, apply ActiveSync or retention policies, or create an archive
mailbox. All these settings can be enforced as you create the new
mailbox with the New-Mailbox cmdlet or immediately afterward with the
Set-Mailbox cmdlet. In addition, Exchange provides a set of cmdlets to
manipulate settings such as language and regional settings and
autoreply and calendar settings.
If
you select the option to create a mailbox for a Windows account that
already exists, EAC uses the Enable-Mailbox cmdlet to create a new
mailbox and associate it with the Windows account you select. The code
is much simpler because the Windows account already has many
established properties that you’d otherwise have to provide. All you
need to state for the new mailbox is an identity, an alias, and a
target database, but I also tend to add a display name (to make sure
that the GAL is correctly populated) and a primary SMTP address. For
example:
Enable-Mailbox -Identity Ccontoso.com/Exchange Users/Kevin Kelly' -Alias 'KellyKevin' -Database 'DB2' –DisplayName 'Kelly, Kevin' –PrimarySmtpAddress 'Kevin.Kelly@contoso.com'
Immediately
after the new mailbox is created, Exchange applies the appropriate
email address policy to create suitable email addresses for the mailbox
and updates Active Directory with these values.
