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Conversation statistics with EWS

Conversations have been a hot area in the Messaging space recently with many different solutions jockeying for attention such as Yammer, Office365 Groups , Slack, HipChat, Skype for business and many other. Each solution offers a different method to communicate and thread different conversations in different ways  over different clients and communication platforms. Typically in Exchange conversations either take place in Mailboxes or Public folders while Groups are a now a newer offering.

When it comes to reporting, looking at conversations can offer some interesting insights as to when conversations are happening how many people are participating and where a Group or Channel based solution might provide some form of productivity gain or usefulness.

In EWS in Exchange 2010 and greator the findconversation operation allows you to query and group conversation threads in a Mailbox folder and you can then use the information returned about the conversations to get the individual conversation items in a Mailbox using the Batch EWS operations. 

To demonstrate some of this I've come up with a PowerShell module that does just that it first uses the FindCoversation operation to get the Messages from the Inbox of a Mailbox or other folders if you use the FolderPath switch.  The script enumerates all the available message from the conversation that it looks at (eg those with more then 2 participants and 2 messages). It then compiles statistics for each conversation about the

Number of messages, participants
Start and duration of the conversation thread in hours
The original sender of the thread and how many messages they sent
The loud mouth (the person who isn't the originate of the thread  who has responded the most) and number of Messages. from this person

I've put a copy of the module on GitHub here https://github.com/gscales/Powershell-Scripts/blob/master/EWSConversation.ps1 to run the script you pass in the Mailbox you want it to run against and period of days to look back eg

 Get-ConversationStats -MailboxName gscales@datarumble.com -Period 60

If you are moving conversations into a different folder in a Mailbox using a Rule eg from a Distribution list you can report on these folders using the FolderPath parameter eg

 Get-ConversationStats -MailboxName gscales@datarumble.com -Period 60 -FolderPath \Inbox\BlahGroup

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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.