Skip to main content

Scripting Contact folder Distribution List though OWA

Contact folder distribution lists presents some what of a challenge when it comes to scripting and programmatic access. The members in these lists are held in a couple of binary MAPI properties and there are no direct interfaces to modify these lists using CDOEX. Modifing the properties directly using Exoledb or WebDAV is possible in some cases just not very easy or flexible. Fortunately OWA does provide a method to create and modify these contact distribution lists which can easily be used in a automation script.

Creating a DL,

This is the one thing that you can do easily using CDOEX,ADO or WEBDAV but one extra thing you can do with OWA is create a DL and add a member to it at the same time. The one restriction I found for this is you can only add one member at a time per request. The following script creates a new DL in a public folder using the save cmd. You need to put the name of your new DL in http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/dlname=NewDlName

Set ObjxmlHttp = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
xmlstr = ""
xmlstr = xmlstr & "Cmd=save" & vbLf
xmlstr = xmlstr & "msgclass=IPM.DistList" & vbLf
xmlstr = xmlstr & "http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/dlname=NewDlName"
ObjxmlHttp.Open "POST", "http://server/public/test2/", false, "domain\user", "pass"
ObjxmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Accept-Language", "en-us"
ObjxmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-type", "application/x-www-UTF8-encoded"
ObjxmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-Length", Len(xmlstr)
ObjxmlHttp.Send xmlstr

I used MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP because of the responses OWA gives back it gets a little bit messy and it best just to ignore the responses.

Adding members to a DLL

To add a member to a existing DL you first need to know what the URL of DL is (be careful its usually more then just the displayname you can use something like exchange explorer to look at the dav:href of the object if your not sure). Then what you do is post to the DL name submitting some commands in the body of the post

Set ObjxmlHttp = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
xmlstr = ""
xmlstr = xmlstr & "Cmd=addmember" & vbLf
xmlstr = xmlstr & "msgclass=IPM.DistList" & vbLf
xmlstr = xmlstr & "member=user@domain.com" & vbLf
ObjxmlHttp.Open "POST", "http://server/public/test2/Dlname.eml", false, "domain\user", "pass"
ObjxmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Accept-Language", "en-us"
ObjxmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-type", "application/x-www-UTF8-encoded"
ObjxmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-Length", Len(xmlstr)
ObjxmlHttp.Send xmlstr


Viewing the contents of a Distribution list

Viewing the members of a DL can be useful for a number of different purposes and its pretty easy all you need to do is issue the Cmd=viewmembers. What you get back is some XML with the email and memberid of each member in the DL. The MemberID comes in handy if you need to delete a member from the DL . Here's a script that demos this

Set ObjxmlHttp = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
ObjxmlHttp.Open "GET","http://server/public/test2/dlname.EML?Cmd=viewmembers", False, "domain\user", "pass"
ObjxmlHttp.Send
set oResponseDoc = ObjxmlHttp.responseXML
set oNodeList = oResponseDoc.getElementsByTagName("memberid")
set oNodeList1 = oResponseDoc.getElementsByTagName("email")
For i = 0 To (oNodeList.length -1)
set oNode = oNodeList.nextNode
set oNode1 = oNodeList1.nextNode
wscript.echo oNode.text & " " & oNode1.text
next


Deleteing a member from a DL

To delete a member from a DL you first need to know what the memberid of the member you want to delete is. So you need to combine a Cmd=viewmembers query with a delete function. The code below does a loop though all the members of the DL until it matches a email address its supplied and then calls the delete function.

usertodel = "user@domain.com"
Set ObjxmlHttp = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
ObjxmlHttp.Open "GET","http://server/public/test2/dlname.EML?Cmd=viewmembers", False, "domain\user", "pass"
ObjxmlHttp.Send
set oResponseDoc = ObjxmlHttp.responseXML
set oNodeList = oResponseDoc.getElementsByTagName("memberid")
set oNodeList1 = oResponseDoc.getElementsByTagName("email")
For i = 0 To (oNodeList.length -1)
set oNode = oNodeList.nextNode
set oNode1 = oNodeList1.nextNode
if oNode1.text = usertodel then
delmember(oNode.text)
wscript.echo "Member Deleted " & oNode1.text
end if
next

function delmember(utodel)
Set ObjxmlHttp = CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXMLHTTP")
xmlstr = ""
xmlstr = xmlstr & "Cmd=deletemember" & vbLf
xmlstr = xmlstr & "msgclass=IPM.DistList" & vbLf
xmlstr = xmlstr & "memberid=" & utodel
ObjxmlHttp.Open "POST", "http://server/public/test2/dlname.EML", false, "domain\user", "pass"
ObjxmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Accept-Language", "en-us"
ObjxmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-type", "application/x-www-UTF8-encoded"
ObjxmlHttp.setRequestHeader "Content-Length", Len(xmlstr)
ObjxmlHttp.Send xmlstr
end function


Some things you need to be careful off, I found you always need to specify the authentication as pass though didn't seem to work. I've put copies off all the scripts from this post here. http://msgdev.mvps.org/exdevblog/contactdl.zip

Popular posts from this blog

Testing and Sending email via SMTP using Opportunistic TLS and oAuth in Office365 with PowerShell

As well as EWS and Remote PowerShell (RPS) other mail protocols POP3, IMAP and SMTP have had OAuth authentication enabled in Exchange Online (Official announcement here ). A while ago I created  this script that used Opportunistic TLS to perform a Telnet style test against a SMTP server using SMTP AUTH. Now that oAuth authentication has been enabled in office365 I've updated this script to be able to use oAuth instead of SMTP Auth to test against Office365. I've also included a function to actually send a Message. Token Acquisition  To Send a Mail using oAuth you first need to get an Access token from Azure AD there are plenty of ways of doing this in PowerShell. You could use a library like MSAL or ADAL (just google your favoured method) or use a library less approach which I've included with this script . Whatever way you do this you need to make sure that your application registration  https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/develop/quickstart-register-
Read more

The MailboxConcurrency limit and using Batching in the Microsoft Graph API

If your getting an error such as Application is over its MailboxConcurrency limit while using the Microsoft Graph API this post may help you understand why. Background   The Mailbox  concurrency limit when your using the Graph API is 4 as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling#outlook-service-limits . This is evaluated for each app ID and mailbox combination so this means you can have different apps running under the same credentials and the poor behavior of one won't cause the other to be throttled. If you compared that to EWS you could have up to 27 concurrent connections but they are shared across all apps on a first come first served basis. Batching Batching in the Graph API is a way of combining multiple requests into a single HTTP request. Batching in the Exchange Mail API's EWS and MAPI has been around for a long time and its common, for email Apps to process large numbers of smaller items for a variety of reasons.  Batching in the Graph is limited to a m
Read more

How to test SMTP using Opportunistic TLS with Powershell and grab the public certificate a SMTP server is using

Most email services these day employ Opportunistic TLS when trying to send Messages which means that wherever possible the Messages will be encrypted rather then the plain text legacy of SMTP.  This method was defined in RFC 3207 "SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer Security" and  there's a quite a good explanation of Opportunistic TLS on Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunistic_TLS .  This is used for both Server to Server (eg MTA to MTA) and Client to server (Eg a Message client like Outlook which acts as a MSA) the later being generally Authenticated. Basically it allows you to have a normal plain text SMTP conversation that is then upgraded to TLS using the STARTTLS verb. Not all servers will support this verb so if its not supported then a message is just sent as Plain text. TLS relies on PKI certificates and the administrative issue s that come around certificate management like expired certificates which is why I wrote th
Read more
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.