Training
Module
Manage Exchange Online by using Windows PowerShell - Training
This module covers managing mailboxes, resources, and admin roles in Exchange Online with PowerShell.
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Use the Exchange admin center (EAC) to create, modify, and manage your resources through email/delegation in your Exchange Online organization.
There are two types of resources that admin can manage:
Room mailbox is a resource mailbox that's assigned to a physical location, such as a conference room, an auditorium, or a training room. After an administrator creates room mailboxes, users can easily reserve rooms by including room mailboxes in meeting requests.
Equipment mailbox is a resource mailbox assigned to a resource that's not location specific, such as a portable computer, projector, microphone, or a company car. After an administrator creates an equipment mailbox, users can easily reserve the piece of equipment by including the corresponding equipment mailbox in a meeting request. You can use the EAC and Exchange Online PowerShell to create an equipment mailbox or change equipment mailbox properties.
For more information see, Recipients in Exchange Online.
Login to the Exchange admin center, and navigate to Recipients > Resources.
The Resources page is displayed.
Click Add a resource and follow the instructions in the details pane:
Click Create.
From the list view, select the resource that you want to edit, and click the selected resource.
In the Room Mailbox details pane, update the following sections:
General
Note
This is available only for Room mailbox.
Booking
Delegation
Others
Use the Manage booking settings section to view or change the settings for the booking policy that defines when the room can be scheduled, how long it can be reserved, and how far in advance it can be reserved.
Allow repeated meetings: This setting allows or prevents repeated meetings for the room. By default, this setting is enabled, so repeated meetings are allowed.
Allow scheduling only during working hours: This setting accepts or declines meeting requests that aren't scheduled during the working hours defined for the room. The default working hours are 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Monday through Friday. By default, this setting is disabled, so meeting requests are allowed outside the working hours.
Automatically decline meetings outside the limits below: By default, this setting is enabled.
Use the Manage delegates settings section to view or change Booking requests and Select delegates.
Accept of decline booking requests automatically
Select delegates who can accept or decline booking requests
Note
For the delegates, you can also select the permission types from the following as Full access, Send as or Send on behalf.
Estimated time to complete a room mailbox: 5 to 10 minutes.
You must be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure or procedures. To see what permissions you need, see the "Recipients" entry in the Feature permissions in Exchange Online topic.
Important
If you're running Exchange Server in a hybrid scenario, ensure you create the room mailboxes in the appropriate place. Create your room mailboxes for your on-premises organization on-premises, and room mailboxes for Exchange Online side should be created in the cloud.
For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard shortcuts for the Exchange admin center.
In the Exchange admin center, navigate to Recipients > Resources.
To create a room mailbox, click add a room resource.
Use the options on the page to specify the settings for the new resource mailbox.
* Room name: Use this box to type a name for the room mailbox. This is the name that's listed in the resource mailbox list in the Exchange admin center and in your organization's address book. This name is required and it can't exceed 64 characters.
Tip
Although there are other fields that describe the details of the room, for example, Location and Capacity, consider summarizing the most important details in the room name using a consistent naming convention. Why? So users can easily see the details when they select the room from the address book in the meeting request.
* Email address: A room mailbox has an email address so it can receive booking requests. The email address consists of an alias on the left side of the @ symbol, which must be unique in the forest, and your domain name on the right. The email address is required.
Location, Phone, Capacity: You can use these fields to enter details about the room. However, as explained earlier, you can include some or all of this information in the room name so users can see it.
When you're finished, click Save to create the room mailbox.
Once you've created your room mailbox, you can edit your room mailbox to update info about booking options, MailTips and mailbox delegation. Check out the Use the Exchange admin center section below to change room mailbox properties.
This example creates a room mailbox with the following configuration:
New-Mailbox -Name ConfRoom1 -DisplayName "Conference Room 1" -Room
For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-Mailbox.
How do you know this worked?
You can make sure you've created the room mailbox correctly a couple of different ways:
In the Exchange admin center, navigate to Recipients > Resources. The new room mailbox is displayed in the resources list. You can apply the filter all rooms and view only Room Mailboxes.
In Exchange Online PowerShell, run the following command to display information about the new room mailbox.
Get-Mailbox <Name> | Format-List Name,RecipientTypeDetails,PrimarySmtpAddress
If you're planning to have more than a hundred rooms, or already have more than a hundred rooms created, use a room list to help you organize your rooms. If your company has several buildings with rooms that can be booked for meetings, it might help to create room lists for each building. Room lists are specially marked distribution groups that you can use the same way you use distribution groups. However, you can only create room lists using Exchange Online PowerShell.
This example creates a room list for building 32.
New-DistributionGroup -Name "Building 32 Conference Rooms" -OrganizationalUnit "contoso.com/rooms" -RoomList
This example adds confroom3223 to the building 32 room list.
Add-DistributionGroupMember -Identity "Building 32 Conference Rooms" -Member confroom3223@contoso.com
You may already have created distribution groups in the past that contain your conference rooms. You don't need to recreate them; we can convert them quickly into a room list.
This example converts the distribution group, building 34 conference rooms, to a room list.
Set-DistributionGroup -Identity "Building 34 Conference Rooms" -RoomList
After you create a room mailbox, you can make changes and set additional properties by using the Exchange admin center or Exchange Online PowerShell.
In the Exchange admin center, navigate to Recipients > Resources.
In the list of resource mailboxes, click the room mailbox that you want to change the properties for.
On the room mailbox properties page, click one of the following sections to view or change properties.
General:
Use the General section to view or change basic information about the resource.
* Room name: This name appears in the resource mailbox list in the Exchange admin center and in your organization's address book. It can't exceed 64 characters if you change it.
* Email address: This read-only box displays the email address for the room mailbox. You can change it in the Email Address section.
Capacity: Use this box to enter the maximum number of people who can safely occupy the room.
Hide from address lists: Select this check box to prevent the room mailbox from appearing in the address book and other address lists that are defined in your Exchange organization. After you select this check box, users can still send booking messages to the room mailbox by using the email address.
Manage resource details
Department: Use this box to specify a department name that the room is associated with. You can use this property to create recipient conditions for dynamic distribution groups and address lists.
Company: Use this box to specify a company that the room is associated with, if applicable. Like the Department property, you can use this property to create recipient conditions for dynamic distribution groups and address lists.
Address book policy: Use this option to specify an address book policy (ABP) for the room mailbox. ABPs contain a global address list (GAL), an offline address book (OAB), a room list, and a set of address lists. To learn more, see Address book policies.
In the drop-down list, select the policy that you want associated with this mailbox.
Others
Delegates:
Use this section to view or change how the room mailbox handles reservation requests and to define who can accept or decline booking requests if it isn't done automatically.
Booking requests: Select one of the following options to handle booking requests.
Accept or decline booking requests automatically: A valid meeting request automatically reserves the room. If there's a scheduling conflict with an existing reservation, or if the booking request violates the scheduling limits of the resource, for example, the reservation duration is too long, the meeting request is automatically declined.
Select delegates who can accept or decline booking requests: Resource delegates are responsible for accepting or declining meeting requests that are sent to the room mailbox. If you assign more than one resource delegate, only one of them has to act on a specific meeting request.
Delegates: If you selected the option requiring that booking requests be sent to delegates, the specified delegates are listed. Click Add or Remove to add or remove delegates from this list.
Use the Booking Options section to view or change the settings for the booking policy that defines when the room can be scheduled, how long it can be reserved, and how far in advance it can be reserved.
Allow repeating meetings: This setting allows or prevents repeating meetings for the room. By default, this setting is enabled, so repeating meetings are allowed.
Allow scheduling only during working hours: This setting accepts or declines meeting requests that aren't during the working hours defined for the room. By default, this setting is disabled, so meeting requests are allowed outside the working hours. By default, working hours are 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Monday through Friday. You can configure the working hours of the room mailbox in the Appearance section on the Calendar page.
Always decline if the end date is beyond this limit: This setting controls the behavior of repeating meetings that extend beyond the date specified by the maximum booking lead time setting.
If you enable this setting, a repeating booking request is automatically declined if the bookings start on or before the date specified by the value in the Maximum booking lead time box, and they extend beyond the specified date. This is the default setting.
If you disable this setting, a repeating booking request is automatically accepted if booking requests start on or before the date specified by the value in the Maximum booking lead time box, and they extend beyond the specified date. However, the number of bookings is reduced so bookings won't occur after the specified date.
Maximum booking lead time (days): This setting specifies the maximum number of days in advance that the room can be booked. Valid input is an integer between 0 and 1080. The default value is 180 days.
Maximum duration (hours): This setting specifies the maximum duration that the room can be reserved in a booking request. The default value is 24 hours.
For repeating booking requests, the maximum booking duration applies to the length of Exchange admin center instance of the repeating booking request.
There's also a box on this page that you can use to write a message that will be sent to users who send booking requests to reserve the room.
Contact Information:
Use the Contact Information section to view or change the contact information for the room. The information on this page is displayed in the address book.
Tip
You can use the State/Province box to create recipient conditions for dynamic distribution groups, email address policies, or address lists.
Email address:
Use the Email address section to view or change the email addresses associated with the room mailbox. This includes the mailbox's primary SMTP address and any associated proxy addresses. The primary SMTP address (also known as the reply address) is displayed in bold text in the address list, with the uppercase SMTP value in the Type column.
Add: Click Add to add a new email address for this mailbox. Select one of following address types:
SMTP: This is the default address type. Click this button and then type the new SMTP address in the * Email address box.
Custom address type: Click this button and type one of the supported non-SMTP email address types in the * Email address box.
Note
With the exception of X.400 addresses, Exchange doesn't validate custom addresses for correct formatting. You must make sure that the custom address you specify complies with the format requirements for that address type.
When you add a new email address, you have the option to make it the primary SMTP address.
Automatically update email addresses based on the email address policy applied to this recipient: Select this check box to have the recipient's email addresses automatically updated based on changes made to email address policies in your organization.
MailTip:
Use the MailTip section to add a MailTip to alert users of potential issues before they send a booking request to the room mailbox. A MailTip is text that's displayed in the InfoBar when this recipient is added to the To, Cc, or Bcc lines of a new email message.
Note
MailTips can include HTML tags, but scripts aren't allowed. The length of a custom MailTip can't exceed 175 displayed characters. HTML tags aren't counted in the limit.
Use the following sets of cmdlets to view and change room mailbox properties.
For information about these cmdlets, see the following topics:
Here are some examples of using Exchange Online PowerShell to change room mailbox properties.
This example changes the display name, the primary SMTP address (called the default reply address), and the room capacity. Also, the previous reply address is kept as a proxy address.
Set-Mailbox "Conf Room 123" -DisplayName "Conf Room 31/123 (12)" -EmailAddresses SMTP:Rm33.123@contoso.com,smtp:rm123@contoso.com -ResourceCapacity 12
This example configures room mailboxes to allow booking requests to be scheduled only during working hours and sets a maximum duration of 9 hours.
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter "RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'RoomMailbox'" | Set-CalendarProcessing -ScheduleOnlyDuringWorkHours $true -MaximumDurationInMinutes 540
This example does the following actions:
$P = Get-User -ResultSize unlimited -Filter "(RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'RoomMailbox') -and (DisplayName -like 'Private*')"
$P | foreach {Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity $_.Identity -AllBookInPolicy $false -AllRequestInPolicy $true -ResourceDelegates "Robin Wood"}
$P | foreach {Set-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "$_`:\Calendar" -User "Robin Wood" -AccessRights Editor -SharingPermissionFlags Delegate}
How do you know this worked?
To verify that you've successfully changed properties for a room mailbox, do the following:
In the Exchange admin center, select the mailbox to view the property or feature that you changed. Depending on the property that you changed, it might be displayed in the Details pane for the selected mailbox.
In Exchange Online PowerShell, use the Get-Mailbox cmdlet to verify the changes. One advantage of using Exchange Online PowerShell is that you can view multiple properties for multiple mailboxes. In the example above where booking requests could be scheduled only during working hours and have a maximum duration of 9 hours, run the following command to verify the new values.
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter "RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'RoomMailbox'" | Get-CalendarProcessing | Format-List Identity,ScheduleOnlyDuringWorkHours,MaximumDurationInMinutes
For information about keyboard shortcuts that may apply to the procedures in this topic, see Keyboard shortcuts for the Exchange admin center.
In the Exchange admin center, navigate to Recipients > Resources.
To create an equipment mailbox, click add an equipment resource. To create a room mailbox, click add a room resource.
Use the options on the page to specify the settings for the new resource mailbox.
* Equipment name: Use this box to type a name for the equipment mailbox. This is the name that's listed in the resource mailbox list in the Exchange admin center and in your organization's address book. This name is required and it can't exceed 64 characters.
Tip
Although there are other fields that describe the details of the room, for example, Capacity, consider summarizing the most important details in the equipment name using a consistent naming convention. Why? So users can easily see the details when they select the equipment from the address book in a meeting request.
* Email address: An equipment mailbox has an email address so it can receive booking requests. The email address consists of an alias on the left side of the @ symbol, which must be unique in the forest, and your domain name on the right. The email address is required.
When you're finished, click Save to create the equipment mailbox.
Once you've created your equipment mailbox, you can edit your equipment mailbox to update info about booking options, MailTips and delegates. Check out the Change equipment mailbox properties section below to change room mailbox properties
This example creates an equipment mailbox with the following configuration:
New-Mailbox -Database "Mailbox Database 1" -Name MotorVehicle2 -OrganizationalUnit Equipment -DisplayName "Motor Vehicle 2" -Equipment
For detailed syntax and parameter information, see New-Mailbox.
How do you know this worked?
To verify that you've successfully created an equipment mailbox, do one of the following:
In the Exchange admin center, navigate to Recipients > Resources. The new equipment mailbox is displayed in the mailbox list. Under Mailbox Type, the type is Equipment. You can add a filter all equipment to view only equipment.
In Exchange Online PowerShell, run the following command to display information about the new equipment mailbox.
Get-Mailbox <Name> | Format-List Name,RecipientTypeDetails,PrimarySmtpAddress
After you create an equipment mailbox, you can make changes and set additional properties by using the Exchange admin center or Exchange Online PowerShell.
In the Exchange admin center, navigate to Recipients > Resources.
In the list of resource mailboxes, click the equipment mailbox that you want to change the properties for.
On the equipment mailbox properties page, click one of the following sections to view or change properties.
General:
Use the General section to view or change basic information about the resource.
* Equipment name: This name appears in the resource mailbox list in the Exchange admin center and in your organization's address book. It can't exceed 64 characters if you change it.
* Email address: This read-only box displays the email address for the equipment mailbox. You can change it in the Email Address section.
Capacity: Use this box to enter the maximum number of people who can use this resource, if applicable, For example, if the equipment mailbox corresponds to a compact car, you could enter 4.
Hide from address lists: Select this check box to prevent equipment mailbox from appearing in the address book and other address lists that are defined in your Exchange organization. After you select this check box, users can still send booking messages to the equipment mailbox by using the email address.
Manage resource details:
Department: Use this box to specify a department name that the resource is associated with. You can use this property to create recipient conditions for dynamic distribution groups and address lists.
Company: Use this box to specify a company that the resource is associated with. Like the Department property, you can use this property to create recipient conditions for dynamic distribution groups and address lists.
Address book policy: Use this option to specify an address book policy (ABP) for the resource. ABPs contain a global address list (GAL), an offline address book (OAB), a room list, and a set of address lists. To learn more, see Address book policies.
In the drop-down list, select the policy that you want associated with this mailbox.
Others:
Delegates:
Use this section to view or change how the equipment mailbox handles reservation requests and to define who can accept or decline booking requests if it isn't done automatically.
Booking requests: Select one of the following options to handle booking requests.
Accept or decline booking requests automatically: A valid meeting request automatically reserves the resource. If there's a scheduling conflict with an existing reservation, or if the booking request violates the scheduling limits of the resource, for example, the reservation duration is too long, the meeting request is automatically declined.
Select delegates who can accept or decline booking requests: Resource delegates are responsible for accepting or declining meeting requests that are sent to the equipment mailbox. If you assign more than one resource delegate, only one of them has to act on a specific meeting request.
Delegates: If you selected the option requiring that booking requests be sent to delegates, the specified delegates are listed. Click Add or Remove to add or remove delegates from this list.
Booking Options:
Use the Booking Options section to view or change the settings for the booking policy that defines when the resource can be scheduled, how long it can be reserved, and how far in advance it can be reserved.
Allow repeating meetings: This setting allows or prevents repeating meetings for the resource. By default, this setting is enabled, so repeating meetings are allowed.
Allow scheduling only during working hours: This setting accepts or declines meeting requests that aren't during the working hours defined for the resource. By default, this setting is disabled, so meeting requests are allowed outside the working hours. By default, working hours are 8:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. Monday through Friday. You can configure the working hours of the equipment mailbox in the Appearance section on the Calendar page.
Always decline if the end date is beyond this limit: This setting controls the behavior of repeating meetings that extend beyond the date specified by the maximum booking lead time setting.
If you enable this setting, a repeating booking request is automatically declined if the bookings start on or before the date specified by the value in the Maximum booking lead time box, and they extend beyond the specified date. This is the default setting.
If you disable this setting, a repeating booking request is automatically accepted if the booking requests start on or before the date specified by the value in the Maximum booking lead time box, and they extend beyond the specified date. However, the number of bookings is reduced so bookings won't occur after the specified date.
Maximum booking lead time (days): This setting specifies the maximum number of days in advance that the resource can be booked. Valid input is an integer between 0 and 1080. The default value is 180 days.
Maximum duration (hours): This setting specifies the maximum duration that the resource can be reserved in a booking request. The default value is 24 hours.
For repeating booking requests, the maximum booking duration applies to the length of each instance of the repeating booking request.
There's also a box on this page that you can use to write a message that will be sent to users who send meeting requests to reserve the resource.
Contact Information:
Use the Contact Information section to view or change the contact information for the resource. The information on this page is displayed in the address book.
Tip
You can use the State/Province box to create recipient conditions for dynamic distribution groups, email address policies, or address lists.
Email Address:
Use the Email Address section to view or change the email addresses associated with the equipment mailbox. This includes the mailbox's primary SMTP address and any associated proxy addresses. The primary SMTP address (also known as the reply address) is displayed in bold text in the address list, with the uppercase SMTP value in the Type column.
Add: Click Add to add a new email address for this mailbox. Select one of following address types:
SMTP: This is the default address type. Click this button and then type the new SMTP address in the * Email address box.
Custom address type: Click this button and type one of the supported non-SMTP email address types in the * Email address box.
Note
With the exception of X.400 addresses, Exchange doesn't validate custom addresses for correct formatting. You must make sure that the custom address you specify complies with the format requirements for that address type.
When you add a new email address, you have the option to make it the primary SMTP address.
Automatically update email addresses based on the email address policy applied to this recipient: Select this check box to have the recipient's email addresses automatically updated based on changes made to email address policies in your organization.
MailTip:
Use the MailTip section to add a MailTip to alert users of potential issues before they send a booking request to the equipment mailbox. A MailTip is text that's displayed in the InfoBar when this recipient is added to the To, Cc, or Bcc lines of a new email message.
Note
MailTips can include HTML tags, but scripts aren't allowed. The length of a custom MailTip can't exceed 175 displayed characters. HTML tags aren't counted in the limit.
Use the following sets of cmdlets to view and change equipment mailbox properties.
For information about these cmdlets, see the following topics:
Here are some examples of using Exchange Online PowerShell to change equipment mailbox properties.
This example changes the display name and primary SMTP address (called the default reply address) for the MotorPool 1 equipment mailbox. The previous reply address is kept as a proxy address.
Set-Mailbox "MotorPool 1" -DisplayName "Motor Pool 1 - Compact" -EmailAddresses SMTP:MP1.compact@contoso.com,smtp:MP.1@contoso.com
This example configures equipment mailboxes to allow booking requests to be scheduled only during working hours.
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter "RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'EquipmentMailbox'" | Set-CalendarProcessing -ScheduleOnlyDuringWorkHours $true
This example does the following actions:
$AV = Get-User -ResultSize unlimited -Filter "(RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'EquipmentMailbox') -and (Department -eq 'Audio Visual')"
$AV | foreach {Set-CalendarProcessing -Identity $_.Identity -AllBookInPolicy $false -AllRequestInPolicy $true -ResourceDelegates "Ann Beebe"}
$AV | foreach {Set-MailboxFolderPermission -Identity "$_`:\Calendar" -User "Ann Beebe" -AccessRights Editor -SharingPermissionFlags Delegate}
How do you know this worked?
To verify that you've successfully changed properties for an equipment mailbox, do the following:
In the Exchange admin center, select the mailbox to view the property or feature that you changed. The details pane displays the latest details of the selected mailbox. To edit general information, select Manage resource details.
In Exchange Online PowerShell, use the Get-Mailbox cmdlet to verify the changes. One advantage of using Exchange Online PowerShell is that you can view multiple properties for multiple mailboxes. In the example above where booking requests could be scheduled only during working hours, run the following command to verify the new value.
Get-Mailbox -ResultSize unlimited -Filter "RecipientTypeDetails -eq 'EquipmentMailbox'" | Get-CalendarProcessing | Format-List Identity,ScheduleOnlyDuringWorkHours
Training
Module
Manage Exchange Online by using Windows PowerShell - Training
This module covers managing mailboxes, resources, and admin roles in Exchange Online with PowerShell.