Exchange 2010 RC is available for a while now and just as with every new version Exchange 2010 contains many new features. One of this feature is the Exchange Control Panel, with this option administrators/users can modify several items. Besides this users of specific groups can perform compliance searches via the Exchange Control Panel.
The login screen is exact the same as the one from OWA. Once when logged in the screen below will be displayed:
When you look at it you see several options:
- users, with this options an overview of all Exchange users will be displayed and you can get details of existing users.
- public groups, with this option you can create/modify public groups
- external contacts, with this options you can create/modify external contacts
- administrator roles, with this option an overview wille be displayed of all administrative roles and you can add users to the roles
- user roles, with this option an overview of all user roles will be displayed and you can add users to the roles or modify the permissions of the roles.
For example when getting the details of an user the screen below will be displayed:
As you can see almost everything can be modified, in the case this is because we are logged in as administrator. When logged in as an user you can’t modify everything. In this screen you will see a new feature immidiatly Mail Tips. With this it is possible to specify a message which senders will see immidiatly when selecting the user as recipient. For example: a user sets up his/her out-of-office, normally the sender will receive an out-of-office when the message has been already send. With Mail Tips the sender immidiately sees the recipient has enabled his OOF when selecting the user as recipient. This option is, when looking at a network with OCS, a very logical feature.
When looking further we see the option public groups, with this option we can add new groups or get details of a group.
As you can see it’s really easy to create a new group. Besides this way you can still do this via the Exchange Management Console/Exchange Management Shell.
The next option is called external contacts in Exchange 2007 this was called mail contacts. With this option you can add contacts which do not have an Exchange mailbox to display the user in the addresslist or just use it to forward mail from an Exchange mailbox to it.
Administrative Roles, standard Exchange 2010 contains several standard groups:
When this option is selected an overview of rolles will be displayed. On the right side of the screen an overview of the permissions assigned to the roles will be displayed. In this case the delegates setup role has view 0nly configuration rights. Besides this you can add users to the roles via this option.
Via User Roles it’s possible to define what users can do in Outlook Web App. With this you can prevent that users can change all fields in the user detail screen.
Besides these options you have the option reports. With this option it’s possible to search the mailboxes for messages send in the last 2 weeks.
As you may already now Exchange 2010 has the compliance search option buildin. This searches can be performed via the ECP by selecting the option mailbox searches. When comparing the option delivery reports with mailbox searches you will see that the mailbox searches option will deliver the result to a mailbox. This mailbox will contain complete messages. As you can perform the search on all mailboxes this can take a while. Via the ECP you will be able to see the status of the search.
As you see some standard configuration thinks such as changing users, creating groups can now be performed also via a Web-based application. What functions will be available via the Web Console in the next Exchange version ??
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