Managing New Mailboxes Under Exchange Server (ES) 2007 Part 1
Microsoft has added many new features to ES with new mailboxes. With a common user mailbox; now ES can have three more, Room, Equipment and Linked, Mailboxes for different scenarios like meeting room or projector. In first part of article we will talk of first two while Linked Mailbox will be covered in part two.
Room Mailboxes:
Suppose the department of your company is often having meetings and you want to schedule all those proceedings and share with each member. Now Microsoft has understood your need to offer this feature: Room mailbox. We can simply attach a disabled account to this mailbox to provide updates to all its members.
Let’s create a simple room mailbox for meeting to be held at our Bangalore office.
Open Active Directory Users and Computer (ADUC) to create a, disabled, user named ‘Meeting Room Bangalore’ to be attached with our room mailbox, shown below.
Now move to Exchange Management Console (EMC) to create New Mailbox…
Select ‘Room Mailbox’ under ‘Choose mailbox type’ of Introduction page. Click Next.
To select just created user in ADUC, click Existing users then click Add under Create mailbox for: Once done click OK to return.
On return you will see ‘Meeting Room Bangalore’ user. Click Next.
Put alias and select the mailbox database by using Browse… button then click Next.
Configuration Summary canvases all your, up-till, settings. If done click New to create one, room mailbox.
Completion shows success and Exchange Management Shell (EMS) command executed against the mailbox created. Click Finish.
Newly created Room Mailbox is viewable in EMC console.
Same room mailbox can be created under EMS using the shown command.
Once room mailbox is attached to the user, another tab, Resource Information, shows up in the properties of mailbox where you can specify its different properties, like resource capacity. Once done click Apply and OK.
Equipment Mailbox:
As the name signifies, these mailboxes are specific to company sharable resources like projector, talking of in the following example. We will create a simple ADUC, disabled, user to connect this mailbox.
Open ADUC to create Projector, resource, user; leave it disabled.
Select Equipment Mailbox under new mailbox dialog started from EMC console. Click Next.
Choose ‘Existing user’ ‘Projector’ by using Add. button then click next.
Put alias name and mailbox database under mailbox setting using Browse… button. Then click Next.
As usual, analyze configuration summary with all history of settings for this, new, mailbox. One satisfied create equipment mailbox by clicking New.
Completion summary of success and EMS command used for this mailbox creation. You have finished.
You will see the change in EMC console, shown below.
Same equipment mailbox can be created on EMSconsole as well, see figure below.
And in the properties of newly create projectors’ equipment mailbox under Resource Information, you can write different properties of resources, as per defined policy. Once done click Apply and OK.
Conclusion: This article created and analyzed the need of two, Room and Equipment, mailboxes.
