Test Exchange server connectivity from the outside: Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer

https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com

Being a network/systems manager can be tedious, especially when the holidays arrive and new mobile devices hit the scene (and your manager's wallet). iPads, Android, WinMo, new laptops, etc.  They will all keep us challenged throughout the season, and we are expected to get these devices to work no matter what - right?

Perhaps the biggest test of a device's mettle is the capability to bring forth your user's email...!

Microsoft supplies developers, admins and end-users alike with a fantastic web service that can test the connectivity to an Exchange server to determine if everything is working as it should.

• Exchange ActiveSync Connectivity 
• Exchange Web Services Connectivity 
• Office Outlook Connectivity 
• Internet E-Mail 

Essentially, the server acts as a client to your Exchange server/mailbox and logs any errors it discovers while connecting.  This takes out the step of trudging through event logs/errors, etc. so you typically will end up with a clear direction of where you need to go if there is an issue.

The two tests that are of particular interest to me are the ActiveSync and Outlook connectivity tests.  Why?  Mobile devices these days use Exchange ActiveSync (or the Outlook Web Access), while many people on PCs away from the office are using Outlook "on the go" (RPC over HTTP).  Either way, if you experience difficulties getting email on your mobile devices, this may be the best way to figure out what is wrong.

Many times, any issues discovered are related to incorrectly configured firewall ports or perhaps the NAT isn't correct for your mail server IP address.  Other times, the error can be quite difficult to track down.  That's where this service really shines.

Take a look at the images below showing a connectivity test (one successful, one not).

Note:  these images are from the Microsoft Exchange Team Blog - they are marked 'Beta', but these screenshots are a bit old.

The service is secure and is run by Microsoft, so you shouldn't have to worry about this being a phishing site - prior to testing your connectivity, it will prompt you for logon and mail server details.  I suppose you could try things out with a test account/mailbox, unless you are running into an issue specific to a particular user.

Archive your GMail, Live, Yahoo! or other eMail: MailStore Home 4

http://www.mailstore.com/en/mailstore-home.aspx



I recently had one of my users request me to make a one-off backup of his entire Yahoo! mailbox as he was noticing some funky stuff going on with his contacts (they disappeared).  He was fearing that the server where his mail was stored was going to give up the ghost soon.

While I half-heartedly doubted that, I did want to accomplish what he requested.


Another use?  Merging mail for when you want to retire that AOL account.

Enter MailStore Home, a very nice freebie application that can connect to your mail accounts and download the entire thing to your computer to search or export to another client.

Archiving = good, searchable = better

Archiving is nice and all, but MailStore also grants you the capability of searching and exporting archived messages.  Searching would be very useful for road-warriors who do not have online connectivity and need to do some email scanning.  The exporting function is useful for those times when you need to pull some content out and use it for something else.

Backing up an account is a simple affair.  Just pick your provider, start the wizard, and let ‘er rip!  Typically, the setup consists of no more than you entering you email address and account password.  Once that’s done, the program takes over.

Back it up!

When you start the backup wizard, you be able to review and change some options that allow you to control the backup process.  For example, you could allow MailStore to back up your spam/trash folders in addition to the normal set of emails that you would really want.



It seems that with Windows Live mail (this may be true of other cached email clients specified) that MailStore backs up what has already been synchronized offline to the client.  for example, when I backed up a Hotmail account (yes, I still have one…old habits die hard), it only archived the messages that I have viewed locally.  Ok, I've archived from a local cache, and while efficient, this doesn’t quite suit my needs.  If you want to make sure you have everything, you may need to tell the client (Windows Live Mail is ‘Shift’+’F5’) to download all mail content, which could take awhile, then run MailStore.

Another thing I noticed: There isn’t a way to export contacts.  This may be due to the inconsistent way that the various providers store them – they aren’t standard mail objects, after all.

I would like to see a way to schedule MailStore to perform backups?  Has anyone done this?

Restore into another mail system

This is BY FAR the most useful feature, although you couldn’t take advantage of it if the rest of the features weren’t here… :)

Like any good archiving program, MailStore does grant you the capability of exporting backed-up email.  The cool thing is that you can export mail directly into another supported mail configuration: for example, export your gmail content into Exchange, your Yahoo! mail into GMail.  A custom IMAP account into your POP account.  Now THAT is way better  than exporting to a comma separated values file.

In my exchange configuration, MailStore created a folder called ‘MailStore Export’ > name_of_mailstore_profile > name_of_folder_exported.

Insanely useful.

Server product available

MailStore does have a server product that you can use at your workplace for number of server platforms (incl. Exchange, Groupwise, Courier, MDaemon – no Notes?) which allows for email archiving for multiple clients and PST files…this also features the same Home version advantages on a managed level.

Likes:

• Export archived mail into a different mail setup - major
• Specify individual folders to back up.  Although for some clients, if you’ve not cached the folder structure, it might be unclear that you are really getting everything (I’m looking at you, Windows Live)  - medium
• EASY backup wizard.  You usually just supply an email account and password - major
• Can archive an Exchange account.  NICE - major
• Allows you to delete from your mailbox what you’ve archived (not available for Exchange account backup) - medium
• Only archive a date span if you wish - major
• Search everything at once - major
• Ability to search attachments, although you need to specify which attachments you’d like to index - major

Dislikes:

• See above ‘like’ about individual folders for backup (cached clients might garner incomplete folder structures) - medium
• A little unclear exactly where you are backing up from (Windows Live Mail) - medium
• Needs more prevalent ‘Home’ button.  Took me a bit to get out of a sub screen which almost looked like a home screen to the true ‘Home’ - low
• No apparent way to schedule backups? - medium
• Doesn’t download contacts or calendar – minor (after all it is called ‘MailStore’) - low

The Home Computer Freeware List

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Rob's great freeware list (aka "toolbox" for building a Windows-based (I know, I know :) ) computer for as little money as possible.

Note that this is a list that I recommend for every baseline installation...I will recommend various specialty applications over the course of my musings, but this is something that I believe everyone should install.

Enjoy - every product here is one that I use, or have used (and liked!) :)

System cleanup utility (good for routine system maintenance) - CCleaner, nCleaner Second - both are quality, but I would say CCleaner is a more intuitive to use. You can do a lot of damage with nCleaner Second if you are not careful!

Defragmenting your hard disk - MyDefrag (for more of you techie folks), Defraggler - Windows defragment is OK, but MyDefrag is light years quicker, and does a lot more optimization (move large files to the end of the volume, for example). Defraggler is a bit more user-friendly when it comes to appearance. Both are quality products.

Create PDFs - PDFCreator - Creates a new printer in your control panel, and allows you to convert anything that you print to a PDF.  Note that this is not an editor, but you can create a PDF from any image, document, etc. simply by printing it to PDF (note that OpenOffice can save a document to PDF).

Read PDFs - Foxit PDF reader - Nice non-resource intensive PDF reading software.

Antivirus - Microsoft Security Essentials - Honorable mentions: Avast! Antivirus, Avira AntiVir.  You should NEVER surf without some form of AV installed. Avast! is nice because it can scan your system for viruses while the screen saver is active, and protects your PC against multiple vectors. Want free AV for a Windows server? Use ClamWin (no real-time scanner, so you will have to run scheduled scans, but it works well).

Spyware Protection - ThreatFire, SuperAntiSpyware, MalwareBytes AntiMalware - Spyware sucks, and these tools do a great job of cleaning them up. I would recommend installing a combination of these utilities, using one to clean-up after the other.


Firewall - Comodo - Very configurable, excellent reviews.

Remote Control (Technical Support) - CrossLoop - This one is great for consultants and other at-home tech folks - totally secure and SO easy to use. Crossloop makes remote controlling mom's computer a dream.  TeamViewer is also great.

Remote Control (Extending your office) - Logmein - Access your computer from a secure (256-bit encrypted) connection. You don't need someone on the other end to approve your connection (like Crossloop).

Screenshot Utility - FastStone Capture 5.3. If you can find it, use it. Newer versions are not free. Can't find it? Use Gadwin PrintScreen. Are you an advanced user? Screen Captor is superior to both utilities.

VPN - Hamachi - Connect two disparate networks together with little trouble. Great for hooking up with your buddies for online gaming, or home "family" support over the Internet.

File Recovery - PC Inspector File Restore, Recuva - Did you accidentally delete your files from your digital camera? Use this to restore it. Good for system drives as well.

Internet Browsing - FireFox - Tabbed browsing, all sorts of great add-ons available, spyware/popup blocker, best of all NO activex support.  Chrome is my browser of choice for some no-frills fast web surfing.

Email Client - Thunderbird - Built in spam protection, RSS reader and more.

FTP Client - FileZilla, WinSCP - Secure FTP, save your sessions, easy drag & drop interface.

Office Productivity - Microsoft Live Office (online), Google Docs (online), Open Office (local install). The non-MS apps are MS Office compatible. Text, Spreadsheet, Presentation software -These will do for 90% of your low to middle of the road users.

Zip Archiving - IZArc - New to the list is 'IZArc', recommended by fellow freeware addict, Carputers. I have to agree. If you use WinZip, then you can use IZArc. Excellent interface, supports the widest amount of archive formats, great features, just great all around!

Keep track of startup programs - Sysinternals AutoRuns - Excellent tool to discover what the heck is running at startup - definitely for advanced users. Can produce a CSV file for viewing later (or to post to online support forums), etc. VERY thorough. You can use this to help you clean up malware that is slowing down your system. Also recommended is Hijack This, which features a huge user-community.

Graphics Editing - The Gimp - EXCELLENT freebie editor with a lot of built-in effects and layering capability. If you like the Photoshop interface, you can try GimpShop. Want something simpler? Use Paint.net.

Image Touch Ups, Photo Processing - Picasa - Easy to use program that can help you catalog, view, burn, and touch-up photographs. Also, you can use Picasa to upload photos to your blog, and submit them to online digital image printing services. A digital camera's best friend.  This program is fantastic for Grandma.  She can quickly burn CD's of the grandkids with little instruction.

Image Thumbnail Viewer - The classic, Irfanview, my personal favorite - FastStone Viewer and another popular one, XNView.

CD Burning - CD Burner XP Pro - Supports burning from/to ISO image files, audio CD's, DVDs, etc. - Especially nice if you have a burner, but no longer have the OEM burning software that came with it. Other quality apps are Infra Recorder and Express Burner Free.

Backup software - Syncback - Backup to/from an FTP location, compress and encrypt data, supports directory synchronization, and much, much more.

Mail Archiving/backup - This is more or less a subset of 'Backup' above, MailStore is fantastic. 

Online storage - DropBox - get 2Gb free, and for every person you recommend (and they sign up and install), you get an additional 250Mb of free storage.  I love DropBox because of it's cross-platform support (I can get to my files on my Android phone). 

DVD viewing (video) - VLC Media Player - Play your DVD/VCD/MPEG videos from a single player. Works GREAT! You can use VLC to watch DVDs without re-installing the OEM DVD software. You can also use it to convert videos (transcode).

Video conversion - Any Video Converter Free. Convert a video file to a myriad of different formats, great for copying videos to your IPod, Zune, or other personal media player.

Video codecs - K-Lite codec pack - this will enable your computer to play just about any video type out there.

RSS News Reader - Google Reader (online).  Keep up with your online news and blogs (*ahem*, like this one?).  I'm really liking the new Google Reader Play feature.

Multi-IM/chat client - Pidgin, and if you don't use IRC, then Digsby is for you!

More as I find 'em.

-Updated 11/16/2010

Spiceworks add-on: Cilantro 0.4.2

Way back when, I wrote an applet that accessed Spiceworks data and allowed you to run local tools & utilities against computers directly.  The utility was called 'Cilantro' (in keeping with the spicy name!).

New version!

Finally, I decided to do something with that code that had been sitting around for the last couple of years.  Version 0.4x beta is out and needs some people to test it.

Running local apps from a web link is problematic

One of the issues with running a web application such as Spiceworks is that it is difficult to run any kind of locally installed program against any of the items found in the database driving that web application...at least not without some way to bypass the web interface and access it directly. 

Sure, you can perhaps write a configuration file at the server level, then download the file via web browser and run with your default application, but some programs don't support this approach.

Access the DB, do some stuff

It is for this reason that I created Cilantro.  It is a program that access the Spiceworks database directly to pull computer names and details so you can run whatever tools you want against them.  That means if you use Dameware, VNC, etc. - i.e. programs that can take a computer name as a command-line option and use Spiceworks to keep track of your network inventory, then Cilantro is the program for you.

Cilantro consists of an HTA (HyperText Application) which runs with a .HTA extension.

Those local apps?  Those are add-ons.

The add-ons are added dynamically to the interface as soon as you start up the program.  This means that you can write your own.  They are XML based, are not difficult to write, and I have full documentation available for those that want to try it themselves.

One cool addition is the inclusion of a new table-filtering javasript, written by Max Guglielmi - this allows you to view large tables of information, type some criteria at the top and filter out the stuff you don't want to see..all very quickly. 

Cilantro resources: 

• Download Cilantro
• Documentation
• Support forum
• Download Spiceworks

RIP Goog-411

As of tomorrow, Goog-411, Google's free caller assistance service, is going the way of the dinosaur.  But with much less of a "BOOM".  On November 12th, 2010, they will be discontinuing the service to focus on other core services and offerings.

Here's the official word:

Back in 2007 we launched 1-800-GOOG-411, a voice-powered directory assistance service that connects you quickly to businesses across the U.S. and Canada. On November 12, 2010, we will shut down the service.

GOOG-411 was the first speech recognition service from Google and helped provide a foundation for more ambitious services now available on smartphones, such as:

• Voice Search - search Google by speaking instead of typing.
• Voice Input - fill in any text field on Android by speaking instead of typing.
• Voice Actions - control your Android phone with voice commands. For example, you can call any business quickly and easily just by saying its name.

Our success encouraged us to aim for more innovation. Thus, we’re putting all of our resources into speech-enabling the next generation of Google products and services across a multitude of languages.

If you don’t use a smartphone, and you’re trying to call a business, you can send a text message with the name and location of the business to 466453 ("GOOGLE") and we’ll text you the information, or on Gmail you can use the new phone-calling features to call any U.S. business free of charge. Also, if you don’t have the free voice search app pre-installed on your phone, you can download it here.

Thanks for all the calls, and keep an eye out for all the innovation to come.
The GOOG-411 Team

Don't get me wrong, I think that expanding and changing technology is wonderful and all that, but I really used this service a lot as it allowed me to quickly dial a contact (Goog-411) and simply say who I wanted to connect with, and it just worked.  No fumbling with texting, No fussing about with performing searches or getting my voice transcribed wrong through my phone's speech-to-text feature.

This was something that I could turn my parents or anyone else of the older persuasion to, and they could use it with little trouble.

Some of us don't have  have texting enabled on our phones *gasp!*- why should I, I have email, instant messenger, and a plethora of other services included in my data package to use.  I use Google Voice to do all my texting.

But, you can't use the shortened numbers to text to/from Google Voice - - try it.  You know the ones - those 5 or 6 digit numbers?  You can't text for those free coupons. .*sigh*

I guess Google Voice Actions are going to be my new robot best-friends. :)

As an alternative, Microsoft has their own voice caller assistance program - use it by dialing 1-800-Call-411 (1-800-225-5411 OR 800 BING411) *Special thanks to my readers!