Roadshow follow-up – Part 2: Set-Mailboxautoreplyconfiguration

Before the start of the Exchange 2010 RoadShow in Gent, I got an interesting question from one of the attendees (thank you Luc) who was eager to know if it is possible in Exchange 2010 to configure an Out-Of-Office for any mailbox in the organization without being required to login to the mailbox itself, using Outlook or OWA.

And the answer is…YES :-)

And even better, there are a few ways of doing so!

Method 1 = Exchange Management Shell

Among all new cmdlets included with Exchange 2010, there are two very interesting ones in this context, namely:

Get and Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration

Looking at our demo mailbox, belonging to me, it’s clear there is no Out-Of-Office  configured yet:

When using the cmdlet Get-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration, we retrieve the same information:

Using a single line in the shell, it’s rather easy to provision the mailbox with an Out-Of-Office:

Set-MailboxAutoReplyConfiguration –Identity <mailbox to configure> –ExternalAudience <allows you to define if you want everyone to receive the external message, or only your contacts>  -ExternalMessage –InternalMessage –AutoReplyState < disabled, enabled, or scheduled if you want to schedule the OOF to start at a defined StartTime and possibly end after defined EndTime>

and this is how it looks using Outlook

Method 2 = Using Exchange Control Panel

Using any browser I can log into the Exchange Control Panel:

Choose to manage Another User, like Ilse Van Criekinge, and configure on her behalf her Out Of Office

To finish, and save the settings, click Save

SideNote

In order to be able to make these changes, you need to have been delegated the necessary permissions!!!!

Until next time,

Ilse