The ExchangeHub Blog

Aug 22
0

Site Mailbox – Microsoft’s Secret Weapon for Collaboration

By | Exchange 2013, SharePoint 2013, Uncategorized | No Comments

Emails and documents are usually kept as separate communication vehicles. Although, have you ever had an issue working with two or more different clients that wanted to access the same documents or email? Bridging the gap between Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint just got a little simpler with site mailbox.

Site mailbox enhances user productivity using a common client interface. The way a site mailbox functions is set up through SharePoint site membership, stored email storage on Exchange and a management interface in order to support the development process.

Let’s say one member of a project wants to access content, they are able to using site Process of Site Mailboxmailbox. Site mailbox is provided in Outlook 2013 and gives users access to the document they need. With some spiffy new additions from Microsoft, you can now access the same documents in SharePoint as well as Exchange. Exchange syncs enough metadata from SharePoint to make the document appear in Outlook. The chart on the right shows how site mailbox is set up.

Managing Site Mailboxes

In SharePoint, you can control the growth of a site mailbox. You can create or remove any documents from SharePoint as you see fit. From SharePoint, you are able to implement a SharePoint Lifecycle policy that allows you to set how long a site mailbox should remain active. If you delete or modify an active site mailbox through Exchange, you are setting yourself up with an issue as your site mailbox will lack any support.

Important Note: Site mailbox can only be integrated if you have Microsoft Exchange 2013 and SharePoint Server 2013.

Customization can get tricky when it comes to Microsoft services, but our certified experts will be more than willing to help you out. Get started today!

Jun 02
1

The Microsoft Exchange Transport Pipeline

By | Exchange 2013 | No Comments

Of all of the enhancements and improvements to Microsoft Exchange Server 2013, perhaps none is quite as powerful as how mail flow is now handled by the Transport Pipeline.  The Transport Pipeline is an assortment of connections, components, queues and server roles which work together to route messages within an organization.

In Exchange 2013, the Transport Pipeline is comprised of the following services:

  • Front End Transport service on Client Access servers   Acts as a stateless proxy for inbound SMTP traffic for the organization, and can electively do the same for outbound external traffic.  The Front End Transport service doesn’t queue any messages locally, and it doesn’t inspect message content.
  • Transport service on Mailbox servers   The Transport service handles all of the SMTP mail flow for the organization.  It also categorizes messages and it performs message content inspection.  In many respects, it is functionally identical to the Hub Transport server role found in legacy versions of Exchange.  This service doesn’t communicate with the mailbox database – that’s a change from the older versions of Exchange.  In Exchange 2013, that job is handled by the Mailbox Transport service. The Transport service moves messages between the Mailbox Transport and the Front End Transport service with the Transportblog_postal_transport_pipeline service in between.  It can also route items to the Transport service on Edge Transport servers if that’s part of your configuration.
  • Mailbox Transport service on Mailbox servers   The Mailbox Transport service combines two unique services – the Mailbox Transport Delivery service and the Mailbox Transport Submission service.  SMTP messages from the Transport service are received by the Mailbox Transport Delivery service.  It then connects to the mailbox database using an Exchange RPC (Remote Procedure Call) for message delivery.  Meanwhile, the Mailbox Transport Submission service connects to the local mailbox database via RPC to get the messages which are then submitted via SMTP to the Transport service found on the local Mailbox server.  It is like the Front End Transport service in that it doesn’t queue the messages locally.
  • Transport service on Edge Transport servers  If your configuration includes the Edge Transport server in your network, all of email coming from or being sent to the Internet will flow through the Transport service on Edge Transport servers. Where the incoming messages go next depends on how you have configured your internal Exchange servers.

If it helps to visualize what we’re talking about, Microsoft has created the following image overview of the transport pipeline:

transport_pipeline

 

We have to admit, that does seem a tad confusing, as even with the visual, it is a bit of a challenge to note the unique aspects of so many services with each having similar names.  On the bright side, YOU don’t have to keep all of that straight – that’s our job! When you need professional help with your Exchange configuration, you can rely on ExchangeHub’s MCSE Consultants to help you get things sorted and running smoothly.