Skip to main content

Change the Journal Recipient for an Exchange Store with CDOEXM via a Script

I’ve been asked the above question a few times by different people and although there is nothing in the Exchange SDK about this someone pointed me to an the following KB article that shows how to do this in C++. This being a little unfriendly for us mere mortals I put the following script together to hopefully make things a little easier. To reduce the need to go in to ADSI edit and get the DN name of the store object and the user object you want to switch journaling to I put some ADSI queries that will find the store in Active directory based on the stores friendly name (display name in ESM) and the another query that will find the user based on there logon name (samaccountname). The script to change the journal recipient is pretty basic it uses the iMailboxStoreDB interface to change the msExchMessageJournalRecipient Active directory property via the field’s property. Although you could probably do this directly via ADSI it’s probably advisable to stick to CDOEXM. The one thing to note about the msExchMessageJournalRecipient Active directory property as stated in this
“ This attributes are read and cached by Directory Service Access (DSAccess), which is the local directory cache on each Exchange server. DSAccess is updated every 15 minutes; therefore, any configuration change you make to these attributes takes no more than 15 minutes to update on the local Exchange computer (you must also take into account replication for multiple domains).”

To run the script you must pass in three commandline parameters the first parameter is the servername where the store is you want to run this against. The second parameter is the displyaname of the store in ESM eg for the default store it would be Mailbox Store (servername) if there are spaces in the store name you need to make sure you enclose the name is double quotes. The last commandline parameter required is the logonname of the account you want to be the journal recipient (make sure you use the samaccountname not a UPN). So to run the script to change the journal recipient on the default mailstore on a server to a useraccount jrnlaccount it would look like

Cscript chjrnrecpv1.vbs servername “Mailbox Store (Servername)” jrnlaccount

I put a downloadable copy of the script here the code itself looks like

Servername = wscript.arguments(0)
set conn = createobject("ADODB.Connection")
set com = createobject("ADODB.Command")
Set iAdRootDSE = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE")
strNameingContext = iAdRootDSE.Get("configurationNamingContext")
strDefaultNamingContext = iAdRootDSE.Get("defaultNamingContext")
Conn.Provider = "ADsDSOObject"
Conn.Open "ADs Provider"
svcQuery = ";(&(objectCategory=msExchExchangeServer)(cn=" & Servername & "));cn,name,distinguishedName;subtree"
Com.ActiveConnection = Conn
Com.CommandText = svcQuery
Set snrs = Com.Execute
mbQuery = ";(&(&(objectCategory=msExchPrivateMDB)(msExchOwningServer=" & snrs.fields("distinguishedName") & ")(cn=" & wscript.arguments(1) & ")));name,distinguishedName;subtree"
Com.ActiveConnection = Conn
Com.CommandText = mbQuery
Set Rs = Com.Execute
While Not Rs.EOF
exStoreDN = "LDAP://" & rs.fields("distinguishedName")
rs.movenext
Wend
if exStoreDN = "" then wscript.echo "No Store Found"
usrQuery = ";(mailnickname=" & wscript.arguments(2) & ");name,distinguishedName;subtree"
Com.ActiveConnection = Conn
Com.CommandText = usrQuery
Set RsUsr = Com.Execute
While Not RsUsr.EOF
jnJournalDN = RsUsr.fields("distinguishedName")
RsUsr.movenext
Wend
if jnJournalDN = "" then wscript.echo "No User Found"
if jnJournalDN <> "" and exStoreDN <> "" then
wscript.echo "Can configure"
set exExchangeStore = createobject("CDOEXM.MailboxStoreDB")
exExchangeStore.datasource.open exStoreDN,,3
wscript.echo "Current Journal Recipient set to " & exExchangeStore.fields("msExchMessageJournalRecipient")
wscript.echo
exExchangeStore.fields("msExchMessageJournalRecipient").value = jnJournalDN
exExchangeStore.fields.update
exExchangeStore.datasource.save
set exExchangeStore = nothing
wscript.echo "New Journal Recipient set to " & jnJournalDN
Else
wscript.echo
wscript.echo "one of the parameters passed in was not valid the script can't continue"
wscript.echo "use Syntax cscript chjrnrecpv1.vbs servername ""Mailbox Store (servername)"" mailboxalias"
end if

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-

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

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
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.