OWA Customization Update : Outlook Web Access (OWA) 2010 Support Policy

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Adding this blog post with respect to my previous article regarding support for Exchange Server OWA customization and its PSS Support Policy. We do get customers that they try and want to us provide assistance on OWA customization for OWA 2007 and 2010. They either want to customize OWA by changing features or by modifying the user interface or want to restore back to the normal OWA. Although they can customize OWA objects by modifying either the script code or the HTML, but Microsoft does not recommend that them to do so.

Please note: Per the support knowledge base article, Microsoft Product Support Services (PSS) also cannot help you with the customization. But if you want to customize the OWA, the following limitations and considerations apply:

  • PSS does not provide assistance to customize OWA objects.
  • If you contact PSS about an OWA issue for a server that OWA is customized on, you must replace the customized files with the original versions of the files and verify that you can reproduce the issue by using the original versions of the files.
  • If the issue occurs only with the customized versions of the files, and you cannot reproduce the issue with the original versions of the files, PSS cannot help you troubleshoot the issue.
  • If you install a service pack or hot fix that updates the files in the Program Files\Exchsrvr\Exchweb folder, any customized files that exist in that folder are overwritten.
  • As a best practice and we recommend customers to follow is, if you do not want to lose the customizations that you created, create a backup of the customized files, and then restore the files after you install the service pack or hot fix.

In these scenarios, although PSS cannot help you (customers/developers/end-users) customize OWA,  they can still try any one of the following resources:

  • As you know, Microsoft hosts public newsgroups where you can post questions and discuss topics that are related to Exchange Server or Exchange 2000. One of the newsgroups where you can ask questions that are related to Exchange 2000 development is microsoft.public.exchange2000.development. To access this newsgroup and other Exchange Server newsgroups, visit the following Microsoft Web site: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb341336.aspx 
  • To locate other Exchange Server communities, visit the following Microsoft Web site: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb341336.aspx

Hope this helps.