Within an organization there is often communication that occurs between staff that should remain confidential and kept within the business only.  However any time confidential information is placed in an email there is the risk that someone will accidentally send the information outside of the business.

Exchange Server 2007 and Outlook 2007 use a feature called Message Classification to prevent this accidental information leakage from occurring.

What are Message Classifications?

A message classification is simply metadata added to an email message that describes the intended use or audience of the message.  Message classifications can be created or customized to suit any type of business with any type of classification need.

When combined with Exchange Server 2007 Transport Rules message classifications can be used to enforce email policies such as the forwarding of confidential information.

Enabling Message Classifications

Although it it possible to create your own message classifications, Exchange Server 2007 ships with several default classifications that will suit most businesses.  These message classifications must be exported to an XML file and distributed to clients. Continue reading How to Protect Confidential Emails with Exchange Server 2007

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 ships with some useful tools for testing the health of the different server roles.

These tools come in the form of PowerShell cmdlets that can be executed from the Exchange Management Shell.

The tools are very handy both during implementation of new Exchange systems as well as when investigating faults.

General Tests

Test-ServiceHealth – tests the health of the Exchange services on the server and lets you know if any required services for the installed roles are not running.

Test-SystemHealth – this is the command line version of the Exchange Best Practices Analyzer, and will alert you to any error conditions or configurations that deviate from best practices.

Test-Path – this is not strictly an Exchange test.  Test-Path is useful when building scripts and is used to verify the existing of an element such as a file, folder, or registry key, returning a simple True/False answer.

Client Access Server

Several of the Client Access Server tests utilise a system-managed test mailbox which you must first create by running the new-TestCasConnectivityUser.ps1 script from C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange Server\Scripts.

Incorrect Client Access Server configuration can cause a wide range of problems within an Exchange Server 2007 organization so these tests are essential during any Exchange implementation. Continue reading Testing Exchange Server Health with PowerShell