|
|
Today's highlights:
Regular features:
Intelligent Message Filter Overview
by William Lefkovics
To provide Microsoft Exchange Server with some basic content
filtering, Microsoft pulled from their wealth of experience with
their spam-magnet known as Hotmail. Smartscreen technology is what
they termed their set of algorithms developed to assess the
probability that an email message was spam. With the goal of
applying this heuristic filter technology across all email
franchises at Microsoft, SmartScreen was first deployed within MSN8,
Hotmail and Outlook in the form of the Junk Email Filter. The
Exchange implementation of SmartScreen is called the Intelligent
Message Filter (IMF).
IMF v 1.0 was a standalone installation for Exchange 2003. IMF v2.0
was included in service pack 2 for Exchange 2003 back in October
2005. Exchange 2007 now ships with an updated content filtering
system, which some may call IMF v3.0.
Unsolicited Commercial Email is not a stagnant venture. Microsoft
provides updates to the IMF filtering based on feedback mechanisms
across its messaging offerings to help keep IMF current to combat
spam messaging trends. These updates can be expected twice a month
and are available as 'High-Priority Updates' through Microsoft
Update.
In Exchange 2003 sp2, the IMF is installed on all servers by default
and then configured thereafter. In Exchange 2007, only the Edge
Server role installs content filtering by default. For small
companies that do not implement an Edge Server or for companies that
employ a different platform as their gateway solution, there is a
Powershell script to run in order to use the antispam transport
agents on Exchange 2007 servers with the Hub Transport role. From
the Exchange Management Shell the administrator can execute the
Install-AntispamAgents.ps1 script:
%program files%\Microsoft\Exchange
Server\Scripts\Install-AntispamAgents.sp1
The Microsoft Exchange Transport service needs to be restarted for
the results of this script to take effect. At that point, there will
be an AntiSpam tab in the Hub Transport settings window at the
Organization Configuration level as shown in Figure 1.
 
Figure
The IMF is a content filtering component which serves as a single
layer in a defense-in-depth approach to message hygiene. Ideally,
other antispam efforts including Connection and Recipient Filtering
as well as Anti-spoofing with SenderID/SPF will have pared down the
volume of messages that content filtering has to work on. The IMF
engages after the message body is received, scanning the subject and
message body and does not address attachment or header content.
The reference point for content filtering for the administrator is
the Spam Confidence Level (SCL). In assessing the spamminess of a
message, the IMF assigns an SCL value to the message. Table 1 shows
the different potential values for the SCL. Exchange reserves a
value of -1 as a special flag to prevent wasting resources filtering
internal and system messages. An SCL of 0 is determined to not be
spam. Finally a scale of 1 through 9 is used as a rating for
messages. Administrators may need to experience these values to
determine what actions to take, if any, for certain SCL values.
Table 1 - SCL Value Descriptions
| SCL Value |
Description |
| -1 |
Reserved for internal and system messages |
| 0 |
Assigned to show as NOT spam |
| 1-9 |
Probability scale with higher value more
likely to be spam |
Figure 2 shows what default actions Exchange can perform based on
SCL values. In Exchange 2007, the Transport service can Delete,
Reject, or Quarantine messages that meet or exceed an administrator
input value. This same properties window allows the administrator to
list custom words that either force a message to be blocked or
prevent the message from being blocked. In addition, certain
recipient addresses may be excluded from content filtering.
 
Figure
Exchange 2003 sp2 allowed a Custom Weight Level (CWL) to be assigned
to messages based on words or phrases using an XML file.
Administrators had to manually update this option. Exchange 2007
brings this chore into the GUI.
Outlook 2007 Calendar Annoyances
Outlook 2007 has a few new or missing features that annoy users.
Here are six things that I'm frequently asked about.
Compressed Weekends
Because of issues with the new calendar overlay, the ability to
compress weekends in the month view is gone. I can't say I'm sad
because compressed weekends caused a lot of confusion near the end
of any month if first day of the month feel on a weekend day. See
'Outlook displays the end of last month, not Today' ( http://www.slipstick.com/calendar/wrongdate.htm) for more
information about this problem.
Week view
The Calendar module also lost another view - the Week view, also
because of problems making it work with the overlay. Given a choice
between these views and overlays, I'll take overlays every time.
Printing
As I've mentioned in the past, Outlook has never had good printing
capabilities and Outlook 2007 is worse than the earlier versions,
thanks to in part to a bug in calendar printing. It uses the Outlook
printing engine for everything now so you can't use simple
workarounds to access Word's or Internet Explorer's print engine.
Fortunately, the Calendar Printing Assistant fixes many of the
shortcomings. Now if we only had email and contact printing
assistants: there are some third party printing tools available. See
'Calendar Printing Tools for Outlook'
( http://www.slipstick.com/addins/calendar_print.asp) for the
Calendar Printing Assistant and 'Mail Tools for Microsoft Outlook'
( http://www.slipstick.com/addins/mail_tools.asp) for additional
printing tools.
Remove calendars from Navigation pane
Outlook 2003 allows you to right click on a calendar in your My
Calendars list and remove it from the list. It remains in your
mailbox and is accessible from the folder list. Outlook 2007 removed
this option and only allows you to delete the calendar, as in delete
it from your mailbox. The behavior is the same for all folders in
Outlook, but it seems like most people don't try to remove other
folders from the view. The fix: move the folders to a new group on
the navigation pane then collapse the group.
Reminder icons on appointments
In an attempt at making the views cleaner, the little reminder bell
is gone in the Day/Week/Month view. You'll need to use a table view
to see which appointments have a reminder.
Free Busy colors
Free/busy coloration is also different, with the blue "busy" bar
missing from appointments. Appointments marked "free" have visible a
white bar along the left edge, with tentative and out of office
appointments displaying a hashed or purple bar. However, all day
events identified as Busy and marked with a color category colorize
the day, creating a patchwork of colors in the month view. Free/Busy and Reminder Default Settings
A question was asked: Can you set the defaults for reminders and
free/busy state to have one hour reminders and always be busy by
default?
The default time for reminders on timed appointments can be changed.
Look in Tools, Options, Preferences tab. All day events will always
default to 18 hours and cannot be changed.
Free/Busy status does not have an option to set a default status,
but in this case, it's not necessary since appointments default to
Busy. If this isn't your experience, you aren't creating new
appointment using the New button or by clicking on a time period in
the day or week view. If you were, Busy would be the default. If you
click on a date in the month grid, you're creating all day events
which, by default, are always Free. Out-of-Office and Tentative need
to be selected when you make the appointment.
If you need to change the Free/busy setting on several appointments
you can use a Group by view to change all items at once. Add the
'Show time as' field to your view and group by it. Drag appointments
between the groups to change their status.
Cloudmark Antispam Update Crashes Outlook
A bad file in a Cloudmark anti-spam tools update installed recently
is causing Outlook to crash. Logs will show an error in NTDLL.DLL
and you may have some installer errors.
If you are affected, you won't need to uninstall Cloudmark to fix
the problem, you only need to download a file which contains the
fix. See
ttp://www.cloudmark.com/desktop/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1062 for more
information |
 |
|
New Utilities
|
CodeTwo Exchange Rules
http://www.codetwo.com/pages/products/exchange_rules.php
CodeTwo Exchange Rules software enables easy and central
defining of disclaimers added to all e-mails sent via Microsoft
Exchange server. Use Exchange Rules to add different disclaimers
depending on a message sender's address or domain to e-mails, to
add personalized disclaimers containing sender's data available
in the Active Directory database to e-mails, for instance first
and last name, company, branch, phones, e-mail address, etc. Or
to record information about all messages sent and received via
Exchange server in the program's logs. Free trial.
MailShadow
http://www.cemaphore.com
MailShadow is an enterprise disaster recovery solution for
Microsoft Exchange that ensures a reliable recovery time for all
causes of failure for the primary Exchange server. Unique among
Exchange DR solutions, MailShadow enables deployment at the
mailbox level, replicates multiple Exchange servers to a single
disaster recovery server, prevents replication of corrupted
data, and uses far less WAN bandwidth than traditional
replication methods. Version 2.0
Outlook Attachment and Picture Extractor
http://www.ope2000.com/product/ope/index.htm
Outlook Attachment and Picture Extractor can extract and save
attachments out from Outlook 2000/XP/2003/2007. Save Outlook
attachments and pictures into a directory of your choice. Shrink
your *.PST file by removing attachments from mails. Version 1.6
Print4OL
http://ical.gutentag.ch/print4ol.html
Print4OL is a Outlook COM-Addin for printing or showing single
(memo style) or multiple (table style, report style, calendar
style or label style) items in MS-Word®, using Word Templates.
Supported on Windows XP/Vista, Outlook and Word XP/2003/2007
with latest Service Pack.
PST2WEB
http://www.touchysoftwaresolutions.com/PST2WEB_Literature.asp
PST2WEB provides a web interface to personal folder data within
your network.
SimPhonE
http://www.pivod.com/products.aspx?c=3&a=31&s=products&forms=true&sc=117
SimPhonE provides integrated device management and control
through the touchscreen and keyboard interface of an IP Phone or
in room touchscreen. Can be configured to work with Exchange
server.
Take Back Your Life Outlook Add-in
http://www.mcgheeproductivity.com/products/home.php?cat=3
Enhance the functionality of Outlook with principles from Sally
McGhee's Take Back Your Life! Using Outlook to Get Organized and
Stay Organized. With time-saving templates and prompts you can:
turn action items into tasks or appointments, file reference
information appropriately, write effective e-mail using the
proven MPS PASS model, access coaching for your Weekly Review,
take advantage of built-in teaching tutorials. Free trial
available. Compatible with Outlook 2003, Outlook 2002 (XP), and
Outlook 2000. An Outlook 2007 version will be available soon. |
|
|
|
Updated Utilities
|
iCal4OL
http://ical.gutentag.ch
iCal4OL is a program for smart importing, exporting and subscribing
ICS files for Outlook. Two-Way Synchronization with Google Calendar
is integrated. Various options cover needs of exchanging and
synchronizing events in the iCalendar format with different
applications & installations, eg. iCAL (Apple), Sunbird or
Websolutions such as Webcalendar, Google Calendar, iPhpCalendar.
Formerly iCal4Outlook.
Open Relay Filter Enterprise Edition
http://www.slipstick.com/redirect.asp?id=vamsoft
ORFEE has SURBL blacklist support, greylisting, tarpit delay, and
automatic sender whitelist for improved spam filtering. ORFEE
supports filtering emails on arrival, which allows delivery path
analysis, keyword and attachment filtering and Attachment and
keyword filtering so you can drop emails with malicious attachments
or replace the attachments with a customizable warning text. Both
the keyword and the attachment filtering support using
Perl-compatible regular expressions and are Unicode-aware. E-mails
caught by the On Arrival filtering point can be dropped, redirected
or tagged (header or subject). ORFEE includes a built-in log viewer
which allows easy browsing, searching and filtering the logs.
Version 4.01
Redemption
http://www.dimastr.com/redemption/
Supports Outlook 2007. This update contains many new features and
bug fixes. See http://www.dimastr.com/redemption/history.htm for a
complete list of changes in this build. Version 4.4.0.714
TimeMeter
http://www.timemeter.com/
Time and expense tracking for Outlook 2000 or later by project,
activity, and employee. Generates reports using Excel templates.
Free trial available. Version 2.9
|
|
|
|
Other Resources
|
Office 2003 Service Pack 3 Administrative Template (ADM), OPAs, and
Explain Text Update
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=BA8BC720-EDC2-479B-B115-5ABB70B3F490
Included are updated Group Policy Administrative Template files, OPA files, and
an updated Microsoft Excel workbook that lists the Administrative Template
policy settings and OPA settings. The following updates are included: Policy
settings that provide the ability to block file format settings to prevent users
from opening or saving specific file types and file formats in Microsoft Office
Excel 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, and Microsoft Office Word 2003. An
updated Excel 2003 workbook (Office 2003 Group Policies.xls) that describes
policy settings listed in the various Administrative Template and OPA files. It
supports changes to the Office 2003 SP3 policy settings. This update replaces
the previously available Office 2003 Service Pack 2 Administrative Template
(ADM), OPAs, and Explain Text Update download.
Outlook 2007 Primary Interop Assembly Reference
http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb187379.aspx
The Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Primary Interop Assembly (PIA) Reference
provides help for developing managed applications for Microsoft Office Outlook
2007. It extends the Outlook 2007 Developer Reference from the COM environment
to the managed environment and focuses on how to use the PIA.
PDF spam - a step ahead of image spam
http://www.gfi.com/whitepapers/pdf-and-image-spam.pdf
This white paper, written by GFI, explains what makes spam such an unbearable
problem and how spamming tactics are evolving daily to beat anti-spam software.
The latest tactic is to use the common PDF file format to send image spam. By
using PDF attachments to send images instead of embedding them in the body of
the email message, spammers have taken the cat-and-mouse game with anti-spam
software developers to a new level. (Aug 9)
TechNet Events and Errors Message Center
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=939422
The TechNet "Events and Errors Message Center" offers detailed explanations,
recommendations, and additional resources that apply to event IDs |
|
|
|
New Exchange Knowledge Base Articles
|
An e-mail message is corrupted after the Disclaimer rule is enabled on an
Exchange Server 2007-based server
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=935489
Error message when you synchronize a Windows Mobile 5.0-based device with
Exchange 2003: "Active Sync encountered a problem on the server. Support code:
0x86000108"
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=937788
Error message when you try to access public folders in Exchange 2003: "Error ID
number: c1030af3" or "HTTP/1.1 503 service unavailable"
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938610
Error message when you try to install an Exchange 2007 mailbox role: "The
Exchange server address list service failed to respond"
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=935636
Exchange 2003 is unable to convert .ics files to Outlook meeting items for
multiple-event iCal files
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=925873
How to move Microsoft Search files and folders to a new partition on an Exchange
Server 2003 cluster node
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938445
The DAV:getcontenttype property is changed, and a .doc file loses some
properties when you use Word 2007 to edit the .doc file on a shared drive M
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=939447
The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service in Exchange 2003 exits
unexpectedly when some users log on to Outlook Web Access
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938225
The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service stops unexpectedly, and event
ID 7011 is logged in Exchange Server 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=938673
You experience one or more issues in Exchange Server 2003 after the daylight
saving time period for New Zealand changes in 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=937653 |
|
|
|
New Outlook Knowledge Base Articles
|
A new feature is available that enables Outlook 2007 to use DNS Service Location
(SRV) records to locate the Exchange Autodiscover service
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=940881
A shared folder is unexpectedly cached to the Offline Folder file in Outlook
2007
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=936247
Frequently asked questions about Outlook Connector beta
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=939894
How to deploy the "Always prompt for user name and password" setting for all
users in Outlook 2003
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=940171
How to troubleshoot performance issues in Outlook 2007
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=940226 |
|
|
|
More Information
|
Click here
to subscribe to the Exchange Messaging Outlook newsletter.
Exchange Messaging Outlook Newsletter
back issues
ISSN 1523-7990
Copyright 1996-2009, Slipstick Systems and CDOLive LLC. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
|
