Skip to main content

Setting the Out of Office (OOF) with powershell and the EWS Managed API

Along with the RC of Exchange 2010 this week the RC of the EWS Managed API made its debut. There are a number of changes some of which break a few of the scripts i've posted here there is full list of the changes on http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/exchangesvrdevelopment/thread/7053c628-9227-4cd5-ba9d-ed6fe8d484cb. But the good thing is now OOF and Freebusy work and the DNS lookup for autodisover is another major improvement.

Setting the OOF is pretty easy with the API lets look at a few examples as before you first need to create a Service object and authenticate if you haven't used the EWS Managed API in Powershell before see this post as a primer. To use this OOF code you first need to download and install the RC version of the ManagedAPI from here.

So lets take it as read we have our $service object now to get the Offsettings its just one call with the email address of the Account you want to pull the settings for.

$oofSetting = $service.GetUserOofSettings("user@domain.com")

A good point to remember when using any of the availability service Call like OOF and FreeBusy you need to always use delegate Access as EWS impersonation doesn't work with the availability service.

To show the OOF state just look at the State property

$oofSetting.State.ToString()

To show the oof message you have to look at the InternalReply or ExternalReply properties

$oofSetting.InternalReply.ToString()
$oofSetting.ExternalReply.ToString()

To set the State and or the Message property you should first get the current setting modify the property you want to modify and then update the OOF.

eg to set the OOF of the currently logged on user you could use the following code.



$dllpath = "C:\Program Files\Microsoft\Exchange\Web Services\1.0\Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.dll"
[void][Reflection.Assembly]::LoadFile($dllpath)
$service = New-Object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeService([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExchangeVersion]::Exchange2007_SP1)

$windowsIdentity = [System.Security.Principal.WindowsIdentity]::GetCurrent()
$sidbind = "LDAP://<SID=" + $windowsIdentity.user.Value.ToString() + ">"
$aceuser = [ADSI]$sidbind

$service.AutodiscoverUrl($aceuser.mail.ToString())

$oofSetting = $service.GetUserOofSettings($aceuser.mail.ToString())
$oofSetting.State.ToString()
$oofSetting.InternalReply = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.OofReply("Test 123")
$oofSetting.ExternalReply.ToString()
$oofSetting.State = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.OofState]::Enabled
$service.SetUserOofSettings($aceuser.mail.ToString(), $oofSetting);

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...

Exporting and Uploading Mailbox Items using Exchange Web Services using the new ExportItems and UploadItems operations in Exchange 2010 SP1

Two new EWS Operations ExportItems and UploadItems where introduced in Exchange 2010 SP1 that allowed you to do a number of useful things that where previously not possible using Exchange Web Services. Any object that Exchange stores is basically a collection of properties for example a message object is a collection of Message properties, Recipient properties and Attachment properties with a few meta properties that describe the underlying storage thrown in. Normally when using EWS you can access these properties in a number of a ways eg one example is using the strongly type objects such as emailmessage that presents the underlying properties in an intuitive way that's easy to use. Another way is using Extended Properties to access the underlying properties directly. However previously in EWS there was no method to access every property of a message hence there is no way to export or import an item and maintain full fidelity of every property on that item (you could export the...

EWS-FAI Module for browsing and updating Exchange Folder Associated Items from PowerShell

Folder Associated Items are hidden Items in Exchange Mailbox folders that are commonly used to hold configuration settings for various Mailbox Clients and services that use Mailboxes. Some common examples of FAI's are Categories,OWA Signatures and WorkHours there is some more detailed documentation in the https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc463899(v=exchg.80).aspx protocol document. In EWS these configuration items can be accessed via the UserConfiguration operation https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/dd899439(v=exchg.150).aspx which will give you access to either the RoamingDictionary, XMLStream or BinaryStream data properties that holds the configuration depending on what type of FAI data is being stored. I've written a number of scripts over the years that target particular FAI's (eg this one that reads the workhours  http://gsexdev.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/finding-timezone-being-used-in-mailbox.html is a good example ) but I didn't have a gene...
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.