Identifying Messages with Read Receipt Requests

In last week’s EMO I mentioned a problem with Outlook 2007 and IMAP accounts, where read receipts may be returned regardless of your tracking options. Several readers asked if there was an easy way to see if read receipts were requested.

Yes, Outlook includes a Receipt Requested field you can add to your view, which makes it very easy to see if anyone requested read receipts, group by the Receipt Requested view, or create an Automatic formatting rule to highlight all messages that contain receipts.

To make a change to the view, right click on the row of field names and choose Custom. To add the field to the view, select Field names from the dialog. Select Receipt Requested from All Mail Items and add it to the view. If you keep only From, Received, Receipt Requested, Subject and Categories in the view (and in this order), the receipt indicator is visible under the date in Outlook 2003/2007's two line view. Choose the Group by or Automatic Formatting options to if you prefer to group or color messages containing read receipts.

Another reader asked why you can't work offline and delete the receipts before they get sent. This isn’t a good solution because Outlook stores them as a hidden messages in the top level of your mailbox. You need to use OutlookSpy or MDBVue.exe to view (and delete) receipts from the hidden folder. See Delete Read Receipts using OutlookSpy for the steps.

IMAP accounts and read receipts present a second problem not mentioned in last week's issue: if you move messages with receipt requests to a new folder a Not Read receipt will be generated when the message is purged from the folder. A second receipt may be generated when the moved message is read or deleted. Your default tracking options should properly handle these receipts based on your settings. However, if you're using the option to always return receipts you may want to switch to always ask so you can stop the Not Read receipts that are generated when you move messages.

IMAP and Junk E-mail Read Receipts (EMO October 24 2008)
http://www.slipstick.com/emo/2008/up081023.htm#4 

Exchange Server 2007 and Bifurcation

by Michael B. Smith, MCSE/Exchange MVP

In my last article, “Mail Flow in Exchange Server 2007”, I introduced the concept of bifurcation. Bifurcation is a fun word to say, but it’s important in reducing bandwidth consumption and in making disk storage usage more efficient. In fact, support for delayed bifurcation is what leads to Single Instance Storage in an Exchange mailbox database. In simple terms, bifurcation means that you take a single message and split it into multiple copies, preferably only when you are required to make the split. The process of delaying as long as you can in making that split is called delayed fan out and it is also commonly referred to as an Exchange 2007 feature.

All of these are related. Let’s discuss them and see how they apply.

Single Instance Storage (SIS) applies to special messages. The requirements for a message to use SIS are:

1] Destination recipients are all in the same Active Directory site

2] Destination recipients are all on the same mailbox server

3] Destination recipients are all in the same mailbox database

If all of these three requirements are true, and there are multiple recipients for a message, then only a single copy of the message’s attachments is stored into the destination mailbox database.

Yes, I said a single copy of the attachments. In releases of Exchange prior to Exchange 2007, only a single copy of the entire message was stored (message body plus message attachment). However, that had a high disk cost (that is, it required more input-output operations than storing multiple copies of the message); and one of the major goals of Exchange 2007 was to reduce disk cost. Many of the tradeoffs involved in reaching that goal required using more disk space in order to reduce various I/O operations.

Attachments are accessed less often than message bodies, so they retain SIS. Also, note that Microsoft recommends against using SIS when planning for your disk usage requirement in Exchange Server.

Next, fan out describes when bifurcation occurs. In releases of Exchange prior to Exchange 2007, if the transport engine detected that the destination recipients were on separate Exchange servers, then bifurcation happened immediately, even if those recipient Exchange servers were side-by-side four routing groups away (that is, multiple copies of a message would cross the network). In Exchange 2007, bifurcation is delayed as long as possible, which leads to the feature known as delayed fan out.

If the Exchange servers for two recipients are in the same Active Directory site, but two separate servers, the bifurcation of the message does not occur until the message reaches a hub transport server located within the destination AD site. If two recipients are on the same Exchange server, but two separate mailbox databases, bifurcation does not occur until the message reaches the information store service on the destination mailbox server. And finally, if two recipients are on the same mailbox database, bifurcation of the message body happens when the message is stored into the database, bifurcation of any attachments does not occur.

Delayed fan out can result in significant bandwidth savings if many of your destination recipients are not in your local Active Directory site. SIS can reduce the storage used by attachments in your Exchange mailbox databases.

Bifurcation is a basic process of all mail transport engines. In this article, you have learned how it is used within Exchange.

Resources:

Exchange Server 2007 Active Directory Site and Connector Selection Algorithms
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/09/14/428920.aspx 

Single Instance Storage in Exchange 2007
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/02/08/448095.aspx 

Empty Junk Email on Schedule

A new Exchange administrator wanted to know if Exchange 2003 offered a way to empty the contents of the user's junk folder every seven days.

Sure, Exchange makes this easy with Mailbox Manager.

In Exchange 2000/2003, open the Exchange System Manager and browse to Recipients, Recipient Policies node. Right click on it and choose New. Select Mailbox Manager Settings and create your policy. If a mailbox folder is not listed, Add it. You can create several policies and apply them to different groups of users. For example, you may have one policy for standard users that removes week old mail from the Junk E-mail and Deleted items folders while these folders in mangers mailboxes are cleaned up monthly. To run Mailbox Manager on schedule, right click on the Mailbox Store (under Servers node) and choose Properties. Set the schedule to run every 7 days on the Mailbox manager tab. Most sites run it Sunday morning but you can choose any day.

The process for Exchange 2007 is similar. Open the Exchange Management Console and browse to Organization Configuration, Mailbox to create the policies.

What if you don't use Exchange server? Not a problem. Go to Tools, Options, Other, AutoArchive and configure AutoArchive to run weekly then right click on Junk Email folder and choose Properties. On the AutoArchive tab, choose Archive this folder using these settings. Set it to clean out items older than a few days and select permanently delete old items. Repeat these steps on the Deleted Items folder.

Outlook Quick Tip: Stop Snoozing

I think we've all done this once or twice: a reminder comes up and you quickly hit snooze then realize you forgot to change the snooze time. When this happens, you can undo the snooze by opening the item, removing the reminder and saving it. Reopen it and set a new reminder.

If you accidently snooze (or dismiss) a group of reminders and need to reset them, switch to the All Appointments view and add the Modified time field to the view. When you snooze or dismiss a reminder, the item's last modified time is updated - sort by this field to locate all the recently touched items then reset the reminders.