Summary

As validated by the length of this chapter, a lot of things can be done to administer an Exchange environment. Administration can be broken down into delegating administration in Exchange; administering mailboxes, contacts, and Distribution Groups; and managing Administrative Groups and Routing Groups.

The delegation of administration in Exchange Server 2003 gives the organization the capability to distribute administration across multiple Exchange administrators equally or with varying levels of delegated authority. The delegation task sets up the framework from which the task of managing and administering objects in Exchange can be conducted .

After delegation has been assigned, the various levels of administrators can manage mailboxes for creating mailboxes, setting default address settings, moving mail between servers, and even recovering mailboxes that were accidentally deleted. The mail and mailbox administrative tools included in Exchange Server 2003 give administrators a variety of rights and privileges to make administrative changes as necessary.

Beyond just dealing with users with mailboxes, Exchange Server 2003 provides administrative controls over Distribution Groups for mailing lists of users, as well as contacts that are associated with email addresses without mailboxes assigned. Managing these objects provides the administrator naming resources that simplify the addressing of mail users in the organization.

Finally, managing Administrative Groups and Routing Groups separates administrative boundaries as well as message-routing boundaries, to partition administration and management as appropriate for an organization.

All of these administrative functions might be complicated when viewed as a whole, but when trying to make an Exchange environment work in a fashion that suits the needs of an organization, the various tools and functions greatly help administrators with their tasks . After more than five generations in development, Exchange Server 2003 provides a variety of flexible administrative methods for managing the Exchange administrative environment.