Skip to main content

Creating Inbox Rules with the EWS Managed API in Exchange 2010 SP1 with Powershell

One of the new features that was added in Exchange Web Services in 2010 SP1 (and improved in the Exchange Management Shell) was the ability to add Inbox Rules. Previously the only method for doing this programatically was a variety of Mapi methods some of which where not particular easy to use. Using the Exchange Management Shell New-InboxRule, Get-InboxRule and Set-InboxRule cmdlets offers an easy one-liner approach for the Admin but if you want to run your code as a non admin or you want to take advantage of EWS Impersonation to create rules on behalf of the user then Exchange Web Services is a good option for this.

There are 3 major components to rules
  • RuleConditions
  • RuleExceptions (Optional)
  • RuleActions
Rule Conditions and Exceptions are essential the same they use the same objecttype RulePredicates the difference is that the conditions in ruleconidtions dictate what items a rule fires on and the exceptions dictates the conditions it doesn't fire on.

With both the RulePredicates and RuleActions to cater for actions such as moving items, replying with an auto response etc you will need to use other EWS operations to find the EWSID's of the particular folder or autoreply message you want to work with so this will require the use of other code. Also for conditions if you have used an email address the address's stored in rule objects are in EX type so using the EWS Resolve names operations can be useful to resolve the name back to an SMTP Address or users displayName.

The following example shows how to create a Move rule based on the Subject of a message it uses a function to find the EWS folderid of the folder to move the message to. Note this script could be easily adapted to instead of using the Subject to move the message move the message based on a X-header eg by modifying the following line

$nrNewRule.Conditions.ContainsHeaderStrings.Add("X-SpamScore: 7");

For the straight EWS Managed API powershell version I've put a download of this script here the code itself looks like

$mailbox = "user@domain.com"
$fldname = "\\Inbox\Sales"

Function FindTargetFolder($FolderPath){
$tfTargetFolder = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service,[Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::MsgFolderRoot,$mailbox)
$pfArray = $FolderPath.Split("\")
for ($lint = 2; $lint -lt $pfArray.Length; $lint++) {
$pfArray[$lint]
$fvFolderView = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderView(1)
$SfSearchFilter = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.SearchFilter+IsEqualTo([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderSchema]::DisplayName,$pfArray[$lint])
$findFolderResults = $service.FindFolders($tfTargetFolder.Id,$SfSearchFilter,$fvFolderView)
if ($findFolderResults.TotalCount -gt 0){
foreach($folder in $findFolderResults.Folders){
$tfTargetFolder = $folder
}
}
else{
"Error Folder Not Found"
$tfTargetFolder = $null
break
}
}
$Global:findFolder = $tfTargetFolder
}

$dllpath = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\1.1\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll"
[void][Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($dllpath)
$service = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeService([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeVersion]::Exchange2010_SP1)
$service.TraceEnabled = $false

$windowsIdentity = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()
$sidbind = "LDAP://<SID=" + $windowsIdentity.user.Value.ToString() + ">"
$aceuser = [ADSI]$sidbind
$service.autodiscoverurl($mailbox,{$true})

$irInboxRules = service.GetInboxRules

$nrNewRule = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Rule
$nrNewRule.DisplayName = "Move all Mails with Sales Reports in Subject"
$nrNewRule.Conditions.ContainsSubjectStrings.Add("Sales Reports");

FindTargetFolder($fldname)

$nrNewRule.Actions.MoveToFolder = $Global:findFolder.Id.UniqueId

$RuleOperation = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.createRuleOperation[] 1
$RuleOperation[0] = $nrNewRule

$service.UpdateInboxRules($RuleOperation,$irInboxRules.OutlookRuleBlobExists)
Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

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 Gr...
Read more

Sending a MimeMessage via the Microsoft Graph using the Graph SDK, MimeKit and MSAL

One of the new features added to the Microsoft Graph recently was the ability to create and send Mime Messages (you have been able to get Message as Mime for a while). This is useful in a number of different scenarios especially when trying to create a Message with inline Images which has historically been hard to do with both the Graph and EWS (if you don't use MIME). It also opens up using SMIME for encryption and a more easy migration path for sending using SMTP in some apps. MimeKit is a great open source library for parsing and creating MIME messages so it offers a really easy solution for tackling this issue. The current documentation on Send message via MIME lacks any real sample so I've put together a quick console app that use MSAL, MIME kit and the Graph SDK to send a Message via MIME. As the current Graph SDK also doesn't support sending via MIME either there is a workaround for this in the future my guess is this will be supported.
Read more

Export calendar Items to a CSV file using Microsoft Graph and Powershell

For the last couple of years the most constantly popular post by number of views on this blog has been  Export calendar Items to a CSV file using EWS and Powershell closely followed by the contact exports scripts. It goes to show this is just a perennial issue that exists around Mail servers, I think the first VBS script I wrote to do this type of thing was late 90's against Exchange 5.5 using cdo 1.2. Now it's 2020 and if your running Office365 you should really be using the Microsoft Graph API to do this. So what I've done is create a PowerShell Module (and I made it a one file script for those that are more comfortable with that format) that's a port of the EWS script above that is so popular. This script uses the ADAL library for Modern Authentication (which if you grab the library from the PowerShell gallery will come down with the module). Most EWS properties map one to one with the Graph and the Graph actually provides better information on recurrences then...
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.