Vikas's Blog https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/feed.xml Wed, 17 Apr 2019 03:48:34 GMT en-US hourly 1 Why is MFA not moving archiving or deleting expired contents from the mailbox.? https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/why-is-mfa-not-moving-archiving-or-deleting-expired-contents-from-the-mailbox Fri, 12 May 2017 14:32:19 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/?p=645 Managed Folder Assistant (MFA). The Managed Folder Assistant is a process that runs on Mailbox servers and applies policies to mailboxes located on that server. The assistant processes items in those folders,Items for which retention is enabled are stamped with the retention age. The retention action specified in applicable on items that have reached their retention age. Managed Folder Assistant is a throttle-based assistant. Throttle-based assistants don't run on a schedule. Instead, they're configured to process all mailboxes on a Mailbox server within a certain period of time (known as a work cycle). Additionally, at a specified interval known as the work cycle checkpoint, the Managed Folder Assistant refreshes the list of mailboxes to be processed. During the refresh, the assistant adds newly created or moved mailboxes to the queue. It also reprioritizes existing mailboxes that haven't been processed successfully for a while due to failures and moves them higher in the queue so they can be processed during the same work cycle. At times you may need to manually start the assistant during testing, troubleshooting, or to process mailboxes immediately. Below is the command to run MFA against the mailbox on demand. Start-ManagedFolderAssistant JDoe@contoso.com In Office 365 , the SLA for a mailbox to be processed by  MFA is 7 days , it means that service will makes sure that a given mailbox will be processed at least once within 7 days, normally the mailbox does get process at least once a day. Below command can be used to identify when a given mailbox was processed by retention policy. Export-MailboxDiagnosticLogs "mailbox" – ExtendedProperties Above command provides some interesting information which is grouped together with an Elc* (email lifecycle) prefix. Above command processes the user’s primary mailbox. If you add the –Archive parameter, you’ll see data for their archive . The output is in XML format. The output can be formatted in readable format. PS C:\> $ElcProps = Export-MailboxDiagnosticLogs JDoe -ExtendedProperties PS C:\> $xmlprops = [xml]($ElcProps.MailboxLog) PS C:\> $xmlprops.Properties.MailboxTable.Property | where {$_.Name -like "ELC*"} Description of some of the parameters is as below ; ElcLastRunTotalProcessingTime  :The total time (in milliseconds) that the Managed Folder Assistant spent processing the mailbox in its last run. ElcLastRunSubAssistantProcessingTime :The total time (in milliseconds) that the ELCTagSubAssistant (the part of MFA that handles item tagging and expiration). Only time spent processing items in the IPM folder tree is calculated. Time spent processing items in the Recoverable Items folder structure (dumpster) is ignored. ElcLastRunUpdatedFolderCount :The number of folders that were updated by MFA in its last run. ElcLastRunTaggedFolderCount :The number of folders tagged (or untagged) by MFA in its last run. ElcLastRunUpdatedItemCount :The number of individual items that were tagged (or untagged) by MFA in its last run. ElcLastRunTaggedWithArchiveItemCount :The number of items that MFA updated with an archive tag in its last run. ElcLastRunTaggedWithExpiryItemCount :The number of items that MFA updated with an expiry (delete) tag in its last run. ElcLastRunDeletedFromRootItemCount :The number of items MFA deleted from the IPM folder tree in its last run. ElcLastRynDeletedFromDumpsterItemCount :The number of items MFA deleted from the Recoverable Items folder structure in its last run. ElcLastRunArchivedFromDumpsterItemCount :The number of items MFA moved from the Recoverable Items folder structure to the archive mailbox in its last run. ElcLastRunArchivedFromRootItemCount :The number of items MFA moved from the IPM folder tree into the archive mailbox in its last run.  ElcLastRunSuccessTimeStamp :The last time MFA successfully finished processing a mailbox. ElcLastRunSuccessTimeStamp provides the timestamp when the mailbox was successfully processed. While processing a mailbox, at times MFA may encounter errors or exceptions, when exception is encountered , it will log these exceptions, which is stored in mailbox and skip the mailbox from being processed for the current work cycle. Exception logged while processing the mailbox can be found using below command ; Export-MailboxdiagnosticLogs " mailbox" -ComponentName MRM Exception will also contain a timestamp when the exception was logged. By default there are two recent instances of exception saved in the MRM.log. Timestamp from ElcLastRunSuccessTimeStamp and timestamp in the two exceptions will help us to identify if the mailbox is processed successfully or skipped due to exception. Exception also provides us error logged while processing the mailbox. Below are some of the common exceptions; Below exception indicates that the mailbox hasn’t log any exception since its creation, in terms of being process my MFA. another common exception is as shown below   To understand the exceptions related to ‘Resource Unhealthy” we need to understand the concept of “Workload Management” Workload Management “Workload Management” was introduced first in Exchange 2013 for the purposes of managing workloads “based on the health of system resources”. Each Exchange workload consumes system resources like CPU, AD requests, mailbox database operations etc. to run the background work. By design, Exchange 2013, adjusts the resource utilization and preserves user experience automatically through:
  • Intelligent prioritization of work
  • Resource monitoring
  • Traffic shaping. It monitors the health of the following key resources to determine when to throttle workloads
  • Throttling Exchange workloads are based on the health of key system resources which protects and manages the consumption of Exchange resources. Exchange workloads may include background services and asynchronous services such as the Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Replication service and the Microsoft Exchange Mailbox Assistance service. As the health of a system resource begins to degrade, the Exchange workloads that rely on that system resource are dynamically throttled to allow Exchange to continue efficient operation. This throttling, known as shaving the peaks, allows users to continue to use resources without experiencing any noticeable performance degradation. Similarly, when system resources are healthy, background workloads are allowed to speed up and fill the valleys in resource usage.
  • Local server CPU usage
  • Mailbox database Remote Procedure Call (RPC) latency
  • Mailbox database replication health
  • Context indexing age of last notification
  • Context indexing retry queue size Exchange workloads can be assigned one of the following classifications:
  • Each Exchange workload (ex: Calendar Synchronization Assistant workload), is assigned a classification and workload policy settings are used for the classification to control both priority and target resource usage.
  • Urgent
  • Customer Expectation
  • Internal Maintenance
  • Discretionary
For example , below exception is logged while processing a mailbox, it indicates that MFA encountered disk latency issues while processing the mailbox. The exception also logs the resource which is unhealthy , using the database name logged in the exception we can easily identify whether the primary mailbox or archive mailbox is delayed from being processed. In short, troubleshooting exceptions like unhealthy resource needs monitoring . There might be no immediate resolution. Proactively if we have identify that the unhealthy resource is a disk and we have identified mailbox database from the exception. We can find whether the primary or archive mailbox is hosted on that database, we can always opt to move that mailbox to another database. Above mentioned are some of exceptions that are commonly logged, there are different exceptions that can be logged for different resource or any issue with mailbox itself or even archive mailbox, which needs further investigation. Gather MRM Data from Office 365 and / or On-Premises https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/Gather-MRM-Data-On-56f0de4c Hope this helps !! Vikas  ]]> Why does my Outlook OST resync when policy is changed ? https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/why-does-my-outlook-ost-resync-when-policy-is-changed Fri, 17 Feb 2017 06:03:44 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/?p=675 [PS] C:\>Get-RetentionPolicyTag "Inbox-365days-Delete"|FT GUID,RetentionID Guid                                                                                            RetentionId ----                                                                                               ----------- 888cbf28-50b6-4f5c-8b88-3a382191faf4                         888cbf28-50b6-4f5c-8b88-3a382191faf4 When MFA processes emails and tags emails with tag and expiration information, it also populates the RetentionId of the tag in the PR_POLICY_TAG or PR_ARCHIVE_TAG property. When Outlook in cache mode sync the tagged email, the tag information is also synced in the OST. For some reason if you change the policy on the mailbox which has new set of tags, MFA is going to re-evaluates all the emails in the mailbox again ,replace the RetentionId in  PR_POLICY_TAG or PR_ARCHIVE_TAG property and recalculate the expiration information. Because of this change on the emails properties, Outlook is going to resync these emails in the OST again. Outlook performance might degrade until the complete OST sync is complete. User connecting remotely might get affected, due to OST sync and if the policy was changed for large number of users, we might see network bandwith getting consumed when large number of users are syncing their OST. This is noticable if policy is changed on bulk users, Outlook users are accessing their mailbox remotely in cache,mailbox size is large and remote connectivity is poor. What happens, when moving mailboxes to another forest or Office 365.? Technet has published a script which exports retention tags from source Exchange organization to xml file and imports tags from the xml file to target Exchange organization.This process is pretty simple. Export and import retention tags When the script creates tags in target organization, these tags will have the same RetentionID  as the source. Thus OST syncing is avoided. In on-premise the guid in GUID and RetentionID are the same, whereas they are different for tags created in Office 365. Therefore when the script is used to import tags in the Office 365 ,the imported tag will have a unique GUID and the same RetentionID as on-premise. You cannot change the GUID to match the RetentionId. It is not required, RetentionId is one which needs to same as on-premise. On-premise tag information. After importing the tags using the script. Above we see that the RetentionId remains the same for imported tag. Having the same RetentionId is the key to prevent OST from resyncing. Hope this help!   Vikas  ]]> Prevent Notes, Calendar and Tasks from getting archived by using EWS script. https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/prevent-notes-calendar-and-tasks-from-getting-archived-by-using-ews-script Sat, 08 Aug 2015 07:30:24 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/?p=435
  • To create a disabled tag so that it will prevent content from that folder from being archived.
  • To create a tag with higher retention age ,like 68 years (24855 days).
    • When you have a DPT with move to archive action , the above mentioned workarounds would not work. Detailed explanation is documented in below blog ; DPT with move to archive action takes precedence over RPT. Notes getting archived by Default Policy tag !! The only workaround available is to apply a disabled Personal tag with move to archive action to a folder, this tag will  prevent content from being archived. This personal tag should look as below; dpt Once the Personal tag is created , the end user is required to apply this Personal tag to the required folder using Outlook or OWA. For example : If I want that the emails in the Inbox folder should not archived, I need to apply this personal tag using Outlook as shown below; Inbox You can use OWA also to apply this personal tag to Inbox folder.   Default Notes, Calendar and Tasks folder. For Notes folder, You can only use OWA to apply this personal tag, since on the Notes folder properties, the Policy tab is not available in Outlook When it comes to default folders like Calendar and Tasks, we cannot use Outlook or even OWA to apply this personal tag. In this case , the only workaround available is to use EWS script and apply the personal tag to Calendar and Tasks folder. There are ready EWS scripts available publicly . I personally have been using below EWS script for Notes or Calendar or Tasks folder, and it does work perfectly fine. The EWS script which can be used to apply a Personal tag to Calendar and Tasks folder is available in the below link; Stamping Archive Policy Tag using EWS Managed API from PowerShell(Exchange 2010) Again the above script needs modifications. Incorrectly apply any script can damage the properties on the folder, so I would strongly recommend to test any script in your lab or test mailboxes before implementing it on Production mailboxes. This blogs is intended to guide you to configure a sample EWS script to apply a disabled Personal tag to Calendar or Tasks or Notes folder ,inorder to prevent content from these folders from being archived. Prerequisites: # Before we make any modification to the script, we would first we need to download and install the EWS API from the below link. Microsoft Exchange Web Services Managed API 2.0 https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/download/details.aspx?id=35371 Note : You can download any version of EWS API. You just need to make a note of the installation directory as we need this path to be specified in the script. # then we need create the disabled Personal tag with move to archive action as shown above. It should be noted that this personal tag created need to be added to the policy which is going to be applied to the users. # Account used to execute the script needs to have the RBAC "Application Impersonation" right. New-ManagementRoleAssignment "AssignmentName" -Role ApplicationImpersonation -User "username" Note : Once the above permissions are assigned , recommend to close the powershell session and reopen a new powershell session to Office 365 for the changes to take effect. # We need to connect the powershell to O365. # Create a text file called "UserAccounts.txt" which has header "WindowsEmailAddress" and populated the WindowsEmailAddress of users against whom the script needs to be executed. Save this file to the same location where you would be saving the script. WindowsEmailAddress User1@Contoso.onmicrosoft.com User2@Contoso.onmicrosoft.com User3@Contoso.onmicrosoft.com   Once above prerequisites are met, we need to download the EWS script which is in the text format, make the required modifications and then save this text files as ps1 format. Download the below TagIt.txt file and edit this file in Notepad and make the modifications shown below. TagIt 1)) Make sure the C drive on the workstation has a TEMP folder, This is where the script will create a log file, this location can be changed in the script by changing the below parameter. [string]$LogFile = "C:\Temp\Log.txt" 2)  Get the RetentionId of this Personal tag using below command. Get-RetentionPolicyTag "TagName"| FT RetentionId 3)  Search for "Import-Module" section in the script and add the installation path of EWS API. Import-Module -Name "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\2.0\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll" 4) Search for "Set the Credentials" section in the script and specify the credential of user running the script who has Application Impersonation right, this is in format "Username","Password","Domain. # Set the Credentials $service.Credentials = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WebCredentials("JohnDoe@Contoso.onmicrosoft.com","Password","Contoso.onmicrosoft.com") 5) Search for "$service.Url" section in the script and specify the EWS URL of Office 365. if you need to use this script for On-Premise mailbox, you need to specify your EWS URL accordingly. # Change the URL to point to your cas server $service.Url= new-object Uri("https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx") 6) Search for the "Change the GUID based on your policy tag" section in the script and past the RetentionId of the Personal tag . #Change the GUID based on your policy tag   $ArchiveTagGUID = new-Object Guid("{ded867ea-bdf2-4f63-bfe1-a0e0171f181c}"); 7)Search for "Change the name of the folder" section in the script and specify the folder name on which you want to apply the Personal tag. #Change the name of the folder $FolderName = "Notes"; $CreateFolderIfDoesNotExist = $false; 8) Once modification are saved to the txt file, rename the TagIt.txt to TagIt.ps1. 9) In the powershell,navigate to the folder where the TagIt.ps1 and UserAccounts.txt is copied and then execute the script. .\TagIt   Its quite possible that before apply the Personal tag to required folder, the Managed folder assistant might process the mailbox, thus archiving the content, it would be better to set the mailbox on "Retention hold" until personal tag is applied to the required folder. Note : This behavior of DPT archiving the content for all the folder is a default behavior, incase your requirement is use EWS script and tag some folders to prevent from being archived, You can write you own EWS script or use any publicly available EWS script which suits your requirement. Note: Script needs to be tested on test mailboxes, before applying on production mailboxes. Incorrect formatting the script would cause properties on the folder to get corrupted. Hope this helps !! Vikas    ]]>         Notes getting archived by Default Policy tag !! https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/avoid-default-folders-from-being-processed-by-dpt Thu, 29 Jan 2015 07:30:13 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/2013/12/20/avoid-default-folders-from-being-processed-by-dpt/ Default Policy tag (DPT) by definition processes all the folders in the mailbox.

    Default Policy tag and Personal tag can only have "move to archive" action.

    If your requirement is to process all the folders in the mailbox,having DPT in the policy meets your requirement.

    Incase you need to exclude a specific default folder to be excluded from being processed by DPT,we need to make some changes to your existing policy.

    For example :

    If the DPT in the policy has delete action and you need exclude the Notes folder from being processed,creating a disabled Retention policy tag (RPT) successfully meets our requirement.

    Things work different if DPT has move to archive action.

    DPT with move to archive action and having retention age less than RPT or PT in the policy will overwrite the RPT or PT. This is explained in the below blog post.

    DPT with move to archive action takes precedence over RPT.
    https://blogs.technet.com/b/vikass_blog/archive/2013/07/04/dpt-with-move-to-archive-action-takes-precedence-over-rpt.aspx

    Consider you have a policy which has a DPT with move to archive action and retention age of 30 days. Your requirement is to exclude the Notes folder from being processed.

    In this case,creating a disabled RPT for Notes is not going to help.DPT is still going to process the Notes Folder and any content in the Notes folder which is older than 30 days would be moved to Archive mailbox,this content will be moved to same folder "Notes" in the archive and on this Notes folder in the archive,the disabled RPT for Notes will be applied.

    In order to exclude the Notes folder from being processed,we need to create a Personal tag with move to archive action and then disable this tag.

    This disabled Personal tag has to be applied to Notes folder using OWA,since the Notes folder in Outlook does not give an option to apply this Personal tag.

    Above mentioned information is not limited to only Notes folder,but to all default folders.

    For folders like Calendar and Tasks folder,Outlook and OWA doesnt give an option to apply this disabled Personal tag,so we need to use the EWS script to apply this disabled Personal tag to folders like Calendar and Tasks folder.

    To exclude any user created folder from being archived by DPT,we need to use the same disabled personal tag.

    Vikas

    ]]>         Exchange 2010 : Retention policy information in Outlook and OWA https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/exchange-2010-retention-policy-information-in-outlook-and-owa Tue, 08 Jul 2014 08:33:16 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/2014/07/08/exchange-2010-retention-policy-information-in-outlook-and-owa/
    When messages are process and tagged by Retention Policy.The tag information along with the expiry date can be viewed in Outlook and OWA.

    There are some minor differences in the way this information is displayed in Outlook and OWA.

    For example,if we have a tag for Inbox ,depending upon the number of days the message is going to be expired,the tag information on a message would change a bit.

    If the number of days remaining for the message to expire is more than 30 days,tag information on the message will be display as below ;

    above we see information like the name of the tag and the date when the message is going to expire.

    But when the number of days remaining for the message to expire is less than 30 days,we would see additional retention information on the message.

    above we see additional information like the number of days remaining for the message to expire.

    Hope this helps !

    - Vikas

    ]]>         Voice Mails and Retention Policies https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/voice-mails-and-retention-policies Fri, 11 Apr 2014 13:59:18 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/2014/04/11/voice-mails-and-retention-policies/ In this post,we will discuss how Voice mail messages are processed with MRM 1.0 and MRM 2.0.

    Managed Folders (MRM 1.0)

    When you create a Managed Content Setting for a folder with Message Class "Email",

         

    the messages class included are ;

    IPM.Note;
    IPM.Note.AS/400 Move Notification Form v1.0;
    IPM.Note.Delayed;IPM.Note.Exchange.ActiveSync.Report;
    IPM.Note.JournalReport.Msg;
    IPM.Note.JournalReport.Tnef;
    IPM.Note.Microsoft.Missed.Voice;
    IPM.Note.Rules.OofTemplate.Microsoft;
    IPM.Note.Rules.ReplyTemplate.Microsoft;
    IPM.Note.Secure.Sign;
    IPM.Note.SMIME;
    IPM.Note.SMIME.MultipartSigned;
    IPM.Note.StorageQuotaWarning;
    IPM.Note.StorageQuotaWarning.Warning;
    IPM.Notification.Meeting.Forward;
    IPM.Outlook.Recall;
    IPM.Recall.Report.Success;
    IPM.Schedule.Meeting.*;
    REPORT.IPM.Note.NDR

    When you create a Managed Content Setting for a folder for Message class "Voice Mail".

            

    The message class included are ;

    IPM.Note.Microsoft.Voicemail*

    Note that there is Voicemail* (star) in the message class for voice mail.

    Which means that we need Content setting for Voice Mail to process Voice Mail messages and Content Setting for Email to process the Missed Voice Mails. If we want to process both Voice Mail message and Missed Voice Mails ,we need to create two content setting for a given folder ,one with message class "Email" and other with message class "Voice Mail".

    MRM 1.0 allows us to create multiple content setting for a given folder provided that no two content setting for a given folder has the same message class.

    MRM 1.0 in mixed environment ie Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010.

    MRM 1.0 and MRM 2.0 is available in Exchange 2010.

    If the managed Content Setting for "Voice Mail"  is created in Exchange 2010,The message class shows only 'Voice Mail" instead of IPM.Note.Microsoft.Voice Mail*" but it DOES process Voice Mail messages.

    Below is an example :

    Content setting Voice1.0 is created in Exchange 2007 whereas Voice2.0 is created in Exchange 2010.

    Now let see the changes in MRM 2.0 with respective to voice mails.

    When I create a RPT for Inbox ,the message class that this tag processes is ;

    Above we see that this tag will process all ( * ) the message class including Voice Mails.

    This might create problem if you just want to process only Voice Mails from Inbox,thou we can apply Personal tag to these Voice Mails,

    To process Voice mails specifically from your mailbox, we can only create a Default Policy Tag (DPT).

    Create a Retention Tag :- https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff625223(v=exchg.141).aspx

    DPT for Voice Mail will have the below message class;

    Since its a DPT it is going to process all the folders in the mailbox and delete only the Voice Mails. Again this is only applicable if you have only DPT for voice mail in the policy.

    If your policy also has RPT for Inbox  along with DPT for Voice Mail as shown below ;

    The DPT would process all the folders in the mailbox and only delete Voice mails except the Inbox folder as we already have a tag for Inbox,thus Voice Mails in Inbox would be tagged and  processed by Inbox tag.

    If our requirement is to process Voice Mails in the Inbox as well as emails in the Inbox.The only workaround would be to change the action as "Move to Archive" for Voice Mail DPT. Now my policy would be as below ;

    With above policy in place,the DPT since has action "Move to Archive" ,it would process all the folders in the mailbox ,including Inbox and move only the Voice Mails which are older than 14 days to Inbox folder in Archive and on the Inbox in the Archive where voice messages are moved will be processed by Inbox tag.

    Note that for this to work the DPT with move to archive action needs to have lower retention age than RPT for Inbox.  Refer  Retention policy on Archive mailbox ? &  DPT with move to archive action takes precedence over RPT

    Hope this helps!!

    Vikas

    ]]>         Items continue to process even after retention policy is removed. https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/items-continue-to-process-even-after-retention-policy-is-removed Mon, 17 Feb 2014 09:33:00 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/2014/02/17/items-continue-to-process-even-after-retention-policy-is-removed/

    When an email is processed by retention tag,it does stamp couple of properties on the folders as well as emails,some of the properties is PR_POLICY_TAG  & PR_RETENTION_PERIOD which contains the GUID of retention tag (These properties depend upon the type of tag and action set on the tag).

    But when the policy is removed from the mailbox,the PR_POLICY_TAG and some of other properties are not removed,even thou messages in Outlook doesn't show they are tagged.

    There have been cases where we do see that these emails continue to be processed by the Folder assistant after policy is removed.This behavior has been documented in the Technet.

    When a retention tag is removed from the retention policy applied to a mailbox, the tag is no longer available to the user and can't be applied to items in the mailbox.
    Existing items that have been stamped with that tag continue to be processed by the Managed Folder Assistant based on those settings and any retention action specified in the tag is applied to those messages.
    However, if you delete the tag, the tag definition stored in Active Directory is removed. This causes the Managed Folder Assistant to process all items in a mailbox and restamp the ones that have the removed tag applied. Depending on the number of mailboxes and messages, this process may significantly consume resources on all Mailbox servers that contain mailboxes with retention policies that include the removed tag.
    If a retention tag is removed from a retention policy, any existing mailbox items with the tag applied will continue to expire based on the tag's settings. To prevent the tag's settings from being applied to any items, you should delete the tag. Deleting a tag removes it from any retention policies in which it's included.

    https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd297955(v=exchg.141).aspx

    In most cases deleting the tags as mentioned above might not be possible.If the policy is removed from a user and you are not planning to assign any other policy to this mailbox.We can either ;

    1) Create a new policy with the disable Default Policy tag. OR

    2) Put the mailbox on Retention hold.

    Hope this helps.

    Vikas

    ]]>         Misleading Disabled Tags behaviour https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/misleading-disabled-tags-behaviour Sun, 16 Feb 2014 12:25:00 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/2014/02/16/misleading-disabled-tags-behaviour/ Recently worked on case where disabled tag was applied to Inbox folder.

    Emails in the Inbox when checked from Outlook in online are showing as the message is expired today.

    Email in OWA shows ;

    Thou these messages are showing as expired,they wont be deleted. These messages are showing as expired because the way the expiration date is calculated. Retention date is calculated based on values of 2 properties. It is the sum of the message delivery time and the retention period (ie Never), since the tag is disabled,the retention period is set to 0,thus showing as the message is expiring today itself.

    - Vikas

    ]]>         Retention tags on Deleted items folder. https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/retention-tags-on-deleted-items-folder Fri, 13 Dec 2013 12:08:00 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/2013/12/13/retention-tags-on-deleted-items-folder/ When Retention tag is applied to Deleted items folder.you would see a different behavior in which Retention tag procesess other folders and the Deleted Items folder.The retention age of mailbox items is calculated from the date of delivery,but when it comes to Deleted items folder,it works differently.

    The retention age for items in the Deleted Items folder is calculated based on the date of delivery unless the item was moved or deleted from a folder that doesn't have an inherited or implicit retention tag.

    The behaviour is explain in Technet article below;

    How Retention Age is Calculated.
    https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb430780(v=exchg.141).aspx

    Example 1 :
    • A user receives a message in the Inbox folder on 01/26/2011. The Inbox folder has a retention tag configured to delete items in 365 days.
    1. The Managed Folder Assistant processes the message. It stamps the message with a start date of 01/26/2011 and an expiration date of 01/26/2012.

    2. The user soft-deletes the item on 02/27/2011.The item is moved to the Deleted Items folder, which has a retention tag configured to delete the item in 30 days.

    3. The Managed Folder Assistant processes the message. It recalculates the expiration date based on the start date (01/26/2011).

    4. Because the item is older than 30 days, it is deleted immediately.

    Example 2:
    • A user receives an item in the Inbox folder on 01/26/2011. The Inbox folder doesn't have a retention tag applied, and the retention policy doesn't contain a default policy tag.
    1. The user soft-deletes the item on 02/27/2011. The item is moved to the Deleted Items folder, which has a retention tag configured to delete items in 30 days.

    2. The Managed Folder Assistant processes the mailbox on 03/27/2011, and determines that the item doesn't have a start date. It stamps the current date as the start date and 04/27/2011 as the expiration date.

    3. The item is deleted on 04/27/2011, which is 30 days after it was deleted or moved to the Deleted Items folder.

    In above Example 2,when the message is soft-deleted on 02/26/2011,the message is moved to Deleted Items folder,in  above example we see that Folder assistant process the mailbox on 03/27/2011.The question can raise is why is assistant is processing the message after one month .
    This is just an example to show the Deleted Items behaviour,Ideally the message in the Deleted Item folder or any message in that matter would be processed quite faster,this depends on the ManagedFolderWorkCycle and ManagedFolderWorkCycle checkpoint.

    Because of the Deleted Items folder processing behaviours,commonly faced issues are;

    1) Outlook in cache mode shows the message is already expired,but Retention policy is not deleting this expired message or moving it to archive. This is because Outlook in cached mode pulls the Policy Tag information for the folder and then does the calculation for expiration itself. But if you see the same message in OWA,you would find that the message is not
    yet expired. This usually happens with items in Deleted Items folder,because the way the Deleted Items folder is processed.

    2) Another common issue is, where Retention policy is implemented because users have lot of items in Deleted Items folder and administrator is implementing Retention policies on Deleted Items for the first time.Therefore when the Deleted Items folder is processed for the first time,items are stamped with a Start date which is date when message was first processed,thus messages in the Deleted Items are going to be deleted after a delay.

    For example,users have 1 year old emails tag on the Deleted Items folder When MFA processes items in deleted Items folder for the first time,it would not see a start date on these items so it will stamp a start date as today
    and expiry date would be the date when message was first processed plus 1 year.

     

    -Vikas

    ]]>         Different ways in which Personal tag can be published. https://docs.microsoft.com/archive/blogs/vikass_blog/different-ways-in-which-personal-tag-can-be-published Thu, 12 Dec 2013 11:40:00 GMT https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/vikass_blog/2013/12/12/different-ways-in-which-personal-tag-can-be-published/ Adding Personal tag in the policy. Personal tag can be made available by adding the tag in the policy and then applying the policy to the mailbox. This personal tag will be available to all user who have the same policy applied. 2) Assigning Opt-in Personal tag Administrator can assign an Opt-in personal tag to a specific user,this personal tag assigned will be available to that user even thou there is no personal tag in the policy. Assigning a Opt-in personal tag to user. Administrator assigned a personal tag "1 Year Delete" to user JohnD using below command. "1 Year Delete" personal tag will be available to user JohnD,without adding this tag in the policy. # Assigning RBAC role "MyRetentionPolicies" to user. When RBAC role "MyRetentionPolicies" is assigned to user JohnD. He can use ECP and assign any personal tag available on the server to his mailbox.These Personal tags selected are not added in the policy.   3) Inheriting Personal tag to subfolders and finding the inherited tag information. Personal tag can be applied to a root folder which get inherited to the subfolders. For example; when we apply a personal tag to a root folder say Folders, the personal tag get inherited to FolderA and FolderB. folders Thou the properties of FolderA and FolderB doesn't show the inherited tag information, when checked from Outlook or OWA. The only way to find the inherited personal tag is using MFCMAPI for properties like PR_POLICY_TAG or PR_ARCHIVE_TAG on the subfolder , another way to find the inherited tag on the subfolders is through Exchange Shell. Get-MailboxFolderStatistics vikas |FT Name,DeletePolicy,ArchivePolicy policy DeletePolicy will show the name of personal tag with delete action applies to the specific folder and ArchivePolicy will show the personal tag with archive action. Removing the Personal tag from the parent folder removes the inherited tag from the subfolders, therefore its important that you set the mailbox on Retention hold when you make any changes to avoid messages from subfolder to get deleted or archive due to change in the parent folder tag information. In order to block personal tag applied to parent folder from inheriting to subfolders, the only way is to apply a different personal tag to subfolder or apply a disabled tag to subfolder as per your requirement. Hope this helps. Vikas  ]]>