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EWS Snippets for PowerGui

Snippets are an idea that has been around in IDE environments for quite some time and can really be a time saver when it comes to writing EWS scripts. The following are the Snippets for PowerGUI that i presented in my MEC talk in September (Sorry I'm a little late in publishing these).

To use these snippits first you need to have powergui then you can download the Zip file that contains all the snippits from https://github.com/gscales/Powershell-Scripts/raw/master/ScriptArchive/ews-PowerGuiSnipits.zip . 

Once you have unzipped the files to a directory run the ./installsnippits.ps1 script from this directory which will create a snippits folder under %UserName%\My Documents\WindowsPowerShell and copy the snippits into this directory.

Using the Snippits is pretty easy but you do need to understand a little bit about building EWS scripts. The majority of the EWS scripts you create will have 4 major phases

1st Phase - Is to connect and authenticate to the CAS server, in this day and age you should have a proper SSL certificate and Autodiscover should be configured.  So in this first phase you need to acquire from somewhere the SMTPAddress of the mailbox you want to access and credentials for you to use to access the mailbox. Then perform a Autodiscover using the SMTPAddress and credentials you acquired which should then return the URL for EWS.

I've bundled this phase into the following snippit



The snippit will take the SMTPAddress as a cmdline parameter

$MailboxName = $args[0]

And also grab the credentials from the user (make sure you use the UPN as the username when it prompts)

$psCred = Get-Credential 
$creds = New-Object System.Net.NetworkCredential($psCred.UserName.ToString(),$psCred.GetNetworkCredential().password.ToString()) 
$service.Credentials = $creds     

2nd Phase - Now you have the URL for the CAS server to send your EWS request to, the next step is to bind to the folder you want to work with. For all the WellKnownFolders you can bind using the WellKnownFolder enum. I've bundled this phase together in another snippit for each folder for example to bind to the Inbox you use



If you wanted to instead bind to a Subfolder or user created folder I have another snippit for this phase which will bind to a folder using a path.





3rd Phase - Once you have the Folderid of the Folder you want to work with you can then either work with that folder or work with the Items in that folder so the snippit to use if you wish to Enumerate All Folder Items is (there are also several example of searches)




 With this snippit you need to replace the $Folder.Id with the Folder.Id from the other Snippit eg if you used

$folderid= new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::Inbox,$MailboxName)  
$Inbox = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service,$folderid)

You should then change

$fiItems = $service.FindItems($Folder.Id,$ivItemView)

to

$fiItems = $service.FindItems($Inbox.Id,$ivItemView)

4th Phase : There is no snippit for this but its basically where you put the code to process the Items eg you could output the Subject

    foreach($Item in $fiItems.Items){     
                $Item.Subject    
    }

or any of the other things I've listed in my other Howto http://gsexdev.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/ews-managed-api-and-powershell-how-to.html


That's it there are over 60 snippits altogether that I'll try to grow over time if you have any you want to include to help others out please send them to me and I'll include them.
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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.