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Show Users last Message Sent and Received Times,Subject in a Form using Powershell against Exchange 2007 Message Tracking Logs

In the past I’ve written and shown many ways to use Message tracking Log data in Exchange 2000-2003 using the WMI MessageTrackingLog class. With Exchange 2007 the WMI class is now gone replaced with a new Exchange Management Shell Powershell cmdlet. Although losing the richness of WQL is a little bit of shame the new cmdlet is pretty funky especially the little status bar (that’s gold).

Message Tracking Logs can have many uses none more so then showing you current mailbox activity like who is actively sending and receiving mail in the last X number of minutes which may be important to you if you are working late at night on a server and you need to know who is active.

This is my first go at a messagetracking log script for 2007 and I must admit I’m lacking some good load data at the moment for Exchange 2007. What this script does is creates a winform with a few Date and Time controls and populates a Drop down box with the names of the Exchange servers within an Exchange organization using the get-ExchangeServer cmdlet. It then aggregates the message tracking logs results together to show in the time period scaned which users have been sending and receiving messages. How much time has lapsed since they last sent and received something and also what the subject of there last send and received message was.

Determine what is Internal vs. External email

When you are writing a Message Tracking Log script this is usually one of the big challenges for Exchange 2007 I took a slightly different approach by making use of another new EMS cmdlets called Get-AcceptedDomain. This cmdlet allows you to get a list of all the domains that your Exchange org is configured to receive email for which ergo with a bit of parsing becomes your list of internal domains with which you can classify email. For this script the accepted domains are added to a hashtable to allow for comparisons to be done in this script.

Working out the Time since the last message was sent and received.

For this the New-TimeSpan cmdlet from powershell is used. This is a pretty powerful little function it returns a timespan object based on the input of two dates you feed it. In this script I make use of the total minutes to show how much time has elapsed between now and when the users last received and sent an email by comparing the current time and that of the received (or sent) datetime of the last message.

This script doesn’t do any filtering on the type of message tracking log entry retrieved using the get-messagetrackinglog cmdlet and limits the total number of entries it will retrieve using the -ResultSize parameter to 10000 records. Once the script has filtered the entires into a number of hashtables the results are feed back into an ADO.NET datatable and then displayed back to the user in a DataGrid which gives you all the sorting richness etc. If you have included the subject in the Message tracking logs the script will also show the subject of the last sent and received email for each user during the tracking period selected.

This is only really scratching the surface of what you can do with Message tracking Logs in Exchange 2007. I’ve put a downloadable copy of this script here the script itself looks like.

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.Drawing")
[System.Reflection.Assembly]::LoadWithPartialName("System.windows.forms")
$DomainHash = @{ }
$Senders = @{ }
$Recipeints = @{ }
$RecipeintsSubject = @{ }
$SendersSubject = @{ }

function GetLogs(){
$dtQueryDT = New-Object System.DateTime $dpTimeFrom.value.year,$dpTimeFrom.value.month,$dpTimeFrom.value.day,$dpTimeFrom2.value.hour,$dpTimeFrom2.value.minute,$dpTimeFrom2.value.second
$dtQueryDTf = New-Object System.DateTime $dpTimeFrom1.value.year,$dpTimeFrom1.value.month,$dpTimeFrom1.value.day,$dpTimeFrom3.value.hour,$dpTimeFrom3.value.minute,$dpTimeFrom3.value.second
$ltTable.clear()
$Recipeints.clear()
$Senders.clear()
$DomainHash.clear()
$SendersSubject.clear()
$RecipeintsSubject.clear()
get-accepteddomain | ForEach-Object{
if ($_.DomainType -eq "Authoritative"){
$DomainHash.add($_.DomainName.SmtpDomain.ToString().ToLower(),1)
}

}
get-messagetrackinglog -Server $snServerNameDrop.SelectedItem.ToString() -Start $dtQueryDT -End $dtQueryDTf -ResultSize 10000 | ForEach-Object{
if ($_.EventId -eq "Send" -bor $_.EventId -eq "Receive"){
$saSndArray = $_.Sender.ToString().Split("@")
if ($saSndArray.length -gt 0){
if ($DomainHash.ContainsKey($saSndArray[1].ToLower())){
if ($Senders.ContainsKey($_.Sender.ToString().ToLower()) -eq $false){
$Senders.Add($_.Sender.ToString().ToLower(),$_.Timestamp.ToString())
$SendersSubject.Add($_.Sender.ToString().ToLower(),$_.MessageSubject.ToString())
}
else{
if ([DateTime]::Parse($Senders[$_.Sender.ToString().ToLower()]) -lt $_.Timestamp){
$Senders[$_.Sender.ToString().ToLower()] = $_.Timestamp.ToString()
$SendersSubject[$_.Sender.ToString().ToLower()] = $_.MessageSubject.ToString()
}
}
}
}
foreach ($recp in $_.recipients){
if ($recp -ne ""){
if ($Recipeints.ContainsKey($recp.ToLower()) -eq $false){
$Recipeints.Add($recp.ToLower(),$_.Timestamp.ToString())
$RecipeintsSubject.Add($recp.ToLower(),$_.MessageSubject.ToString())
}
else{
if ([DateTime]::Parse($Recipeints[$recp.ToLower()]) -lt $_.Timestamp){
$Recipeints[$recp.ToLower()] = $_.Timestamp.ToString()
$RecipeintsSubject[$recp.ToLower()] = $_.MessageSubject.ToString()
}
}
}
}


}}
foreach ($key in $Recipeints.keys){
$Recvtimespan = New-TimeSpan -start ($Recipeints[$key]) -end $(Get-Date)
$user = get-user $key
if ($user -ne $null){
if ($Senders.ContainsKey($key)){
$SentTimeSpan = New-TimeSpan -start ($Senders[$key]) -end $(Get-Date)
$ltTable.Rows.Add($user.displayName,$Senders[$key],[math]::round($SentTimeSpan.TotalMinutes,0),$Recipeints[$key],[math]::round($Recvtimespan.TotalMinutes),$RecipeintsSubject[$key],$SendersSubject[$key])}
else {$ltTable.Rows.Add($user.displayName,"n/a","n/a",$Recipeints[$key],[math]::round($Recvtimespan.TotalMinutes,0),$RecipeintsSubject[$key],"n/a")}
}}
foreach ($key in $Senders.keys){
$user = get-user $key
if ($user -ne $null){
if ($Recipeints.ContainsKey($key) -eq $false){
$SentTimeSpan = New-TimeSpan -start ($Senders[$key]) -end $(Get-Date)
$ltTable.Rows.Add($user.displayName,$Senders[$key],[math]::round($SentTimeSpan.TotalMinutes,0),"n/a","n/a","n/a",$SendersSubject[$key])

}}

}
$dgDataGrid.DataSource = $ltTable
}

$ltTable = New-Object System.Data.DataTable
$ltTable.TableName = "SentAndRecv"
$ltTable.Columns.Add("Mailbox")
$ltTable.Columns.Add("Last Mail Sent")
$ltTable.Columns.Add("Minutes since Last Mail Sent")
$ltTable.Columns.Add("Last Recieved Mail")
$ltTable.Columns.Add("Minutes since Last Mail Recieved")
$ltTable.Columns.Add("Subject of Last Mail Recieved")
$ltTable.Columns.Add("Subject of Last Mail Sent")
$form = new-object System.Windows.Forms.form
$form.Text = "Exchange Last Sent and Recieved Form"


# Add Search Button

$exButton = new-object System.Windows.Forms.Button
$exButton.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(270,20)
$exButton.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(85,20)
$exButton.Text = "Search"
$exButton.Add_Click({GetLogs})
$form.Controls.Add($exButton)

# Add Server DropLable
$snServerNamelableBox = new-object System.Windows.Forms.Label
$snServerNamelableBox.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(10,20)
$snServerNamelableBox.size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(100,20)
$snServerNamelableBox.Text = "ServerName"
$form.Controls.Add($snServerNamelableBox)

# Add Server Drop Down
$snServerNameDrop = new-object System.Windows.Forms.ComboBox
$snServerNameDrop.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(130,20)
$snServerNameDrop.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(130,30)
get-Exchangeserver | ForEach-Object{$snServerNameDrop.Items.Add($_.Name)}
# $snServerNameDrop.Add_SelectedValueChanged({GetLogs})
$form.Controls.Add($snServerNameDrop)
# Add DateTimePickers Button

$dpDatePickerFromlableBox = new-object System.Windows.Forms.Label
$dpDatePickerFromlableBox.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(10,50)
$dpDatePickerFromlableBox.size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(90,20)
$dpDatePickerFromlableBox.Text = "Logged Between"
$form.Controls.Add($dpDatePickerFromlableBox)

$dpTimeFrom = new-object System.Windows.Forms.DateTimePicker
$dpTimeFrom.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(120,50)
$dpTimeFrom.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(190,20)
$form.Controls.Add($dpTimeFrom)

$dpDatePickerFromlableBox1 = new-object System.Windows.Forms.Label
$dpDatePickerFromlableBox1.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(10,70)
$dpDatePickerFromlableBox1.size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(50,20)
$dpDatePickerFromlableBox1.Text = "and"
$form.Controls.Add($dpDatePickerFromlableBox1)

$dpTimeFrom1 = new-object System.Windows.Forms.DateTimePicker
$dpTimeFrom1.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(120,70)
$dpTimeFrom1.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(190,20)
$form.Controls.Add($dpTimeFrom1)

$dpTimeFrom2 = new-object System.Windows.Forms.DateTimePicker
$dpTimeFrom2.Format = "Time"
$dpTimeFrom2.value = [DateTime]::get_Now().AddHours(-1)
$dpTimeFrom2.ShowUpDown = $True
$dpTimeFrom2.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(315,50)
$dpTimeFrom2.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(90,20)
$form.Controls.Add($dpTimeFrom2)

$dpTimeFrom3 = new-object System.Windows.Forms.DateTimePicker
$dpTimeFrom3.Format = "Time"
$dpTimeFrom3.ShowUpDown = $True
$dpTimeFrom3.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(315,70)
$dpTimeFrom3.Size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(90,20)
$form.Controls.Add($dpTimeFrom3)



# Add DataGrid View

$dgDataGrid = new-object System.windows.forms.DataGridView
$dgDataGrid.Location = new-object System.Drawing.Size(10,100)
$dgDataGrid.size = new-object System.Drawing.Size(1000,600)
$dgDataGrid.AutoSizeColumnsMode = "AllCells"

$form.Controls.Add($dgDataGrid)

#populate DataGrid

$form.topmost = $true
$form.Add_Shown({$form.Activate()})
$form.ShowDialog()


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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.