Recipe5.26.Using Mailbox Manager

Recipe 5.26. Using Mailbox Manager

Problem

You want to use the Mailbox Manager feature of Exchange Server to clean up certain items within your users' mailboxes.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

1. Open the Exchange System Manager (Exchange System Manager.msc).

2. Expand the Recipients node and select the Recipient Policies node.

3. Right-click Recipient Policies and select New Recipient Policy.

4. On the General tab, type a name for the policy, such as Mailbox Manager.

5. Select the Mailbox Manager Setting (Policy) tab.

6. Ensure that the default settings meet your needs. If you wish to modify an item, select the item and click Edit to change either the age or size limit defined.

7. In the When processing a mailbox drop-down list, select Move to Deleted Items folder. You may also choose to use the reporting mode initially; if so, select Generate report only.

8. Select Send notification to mail user after processing and click Message.

9. Modify the message as appropriate. You may also select the Insert the number of messages processed option so your users will know how many items were cleaned up within their mailbox. Click OK.

10. Click Apply. Close Mailbox Manager Properties by clicking OK.

You now need to schedule Mailbox Manager to run on each mailbox server within your organization. The same set of policies you just created will be used on each server.

1. In the Exchange System Manager snap-in, browse to the Server object (Administrative Groups Administrative Group Name Servers Server Name).

2. Select the Mailbox Management tab (see Figure 5-7).

3. In the Start mailbox management process drop-down list, select Run Saturday at Midnight (or pick a time that works best for your organizationit's best to ensure the mailbox management process doesn't overlap with any other type of system maintenance, such as online maintenance or backup processes, if possible). If none of the times in the drop-down list work with your schedule, select the Use custom schedule option and click Customize to create your schedule.

4. In the Reporting drop-down list, select Send summary report to administrator. If you wish to have more detailed reporting, you can alternately select Send detail report to administrator.

5. Click Browse. Type the name of the account or group that you want to receive the reports and click Check Names. Click OK to exit the Select Recipient dialog.

6. Click Apply and click OK.

7. Repeat steps 4 through 7 on each mailbox server within your organization.

Figure 5-7. Scheduling Mailbox Manager

Discussion

Mailbox Manager examines three MAPI properties of an object when determining whether to process an item according to the policies in place: PR_MESSAGE_DELIVERY_TIME, PR_CLIENT_SUBMIT_TIME, and PR_LAST_MODIFICATION_TIME. If all three of these properties do not meet the criteria defined within Mailbox Manager, then the object will not be removed from the mailbox. Since the PR_LAST_MODIFICATION_TIME property is reset each time a message is opened, items that you might have expected to be removed from the mailbox may still be in place. This is to ensure that objects that are currently in use within the mailbox remain active and usable.

For objects such as IPM.Appointment, IPM.Task, and IPM.Journal, additional MAPI properties are checked to ensure that active and recurring appointments, active tasks, and active journaling activities are retained. You may not want mailbox manager to take action on a specific message class. In order to leave all appointment items, for instance, you can select Exclude Specific Message Classes and click Customize. You would then type IPM.Appointment in the Exclude Message Classes area and click Add.

Mailbox Manager also checks for message sizes. By default, it will not remove items that are less than 1 MB. If the message size is less than 1 MB (or whatever size you modify your policy to use), it will not be deleted from the mailbox even if it is older than the age limit defined in your policy (which is 30 days in the default settings).

It is always best to initially run Mailbox Manager in report mode to determine what the results of the scan will be.

It's possible to create a script to duplicate the functionality of Mailbox Manager, but it seems impractical to do so, given the inherent flexibility of Mailbox Manager itself.

See Also

MS KB 302804 (Message Age Limit Properties Used by Mailbox Manager) and MS KB 319188 (How to use recipient policies to control mailboxes in Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003)