Skip to main content

Advanced Search Folder creation with EWS and Powershell

In the past I've posted some examples of creating SearchFolders in Exchange with EWS and Powershell in the following post,  in this post I want to cover some more advanced things you can do with EWS and Search Folders.

The first thing I want to cover is how you change the option on a Search folder from "Show number of unread items" which is the default when you create a search folder in EWS to "Show total number of items". eg




To change this option you need to set the PidTagExtendedFolderFlags property which is documented in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/cc839880(v=office.15).aspx . This is a binary property and you set this particular option by changing bit 6-7 in this property. Because you also need the SearchFolderGuid in this property the easiest time is to set this is right after you create the folder. eg
  1. $searchFolder.Save($sfRoot.Id);  
  2. $PR_EXTENDED_FOLDER_FLAGS = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExtendedPropertyDefinition(0x36DA, [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.MapiPropertyType]::Binary)  
  3. $psPropset = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.PropertySet([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.BasePropertySet]::FirstClassProperties)    
  4. $psPropset.Add($PR_EXTENDED_FOLDER_FLAGS)  
  5. $searchFolder.Load($psPropset)  
  6. $exVal = $null  
  7. if($SearchFolder.TryGetProperty($PR_EXTENDED_FOLDER_FLAGS,[ref]$exVal)){  
  8.      $newVal = "010402001000" + [System.BitConverter]::ToString($exVal).Replace("-","")  
  9.      $byteVal = HexStringToByteArray($newVal)  
  10.      $SearchFolder.SetExtendedProperty($PR_EXTENDED_FOLDER_FLAGS,$byteVal)  
  11.      $searchFolder.Update()  
  12. }  
  13. "Folder Created"  

Some other interesting things you can do when using EWS to create search Folders is you can filter on some of the more advanced Item properties you can't access normally using Outlook. For example the PidTagLastVerbExecuted can be used to create a Search folder to find all email where the last action taken on the Message was to reply to the Sender. Eg this would create a SearchFolder with this type of filter
  1. $PR_LAST_VERB_EXECUTED = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExtendedPropertyDefinition(0x1081, [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.MapiPropertyType]::Integer)    
  2. $sfItemSearchFilter = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.SearchFilter+IsEqualTo($PR_LAST_VERB_EXECUTED,102)   
  3. #$service.ImpersonatedUserId = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ImpersonatedUserId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ConnectingIdType]::SmtpAddress, $MailboxName)   
  4. $SearchFolder = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.SearchFolder($service);  
  5. $rfRootFolderId = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::MsgFolderRoot,$MailboxName)     
  6. $searchFolder.SearchParameters.RootFolderIds.Add($rfRootFolderId);  
  7. $searchFolder.SearchParameters.Traversal = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.SearchFolderTraversal]::Deep;  
  8. $searchFolder.SearchParameters.SearchFilter = $sfItemSearchFilter  
  9. $searchFolder.DisplayName = $SearchFilterName  
  10. $folderid = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::SearchFolders,$MailboxName)     
  11. $sfRoot = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service,$folderid)  
  12. $searchFolder.Save($sfRoot.Id);  

Another interesting Search Folder you can create on 2013/Office365 is using the LatestWordCount property which isn't a documented property but you can use it to produce a SearchFolder of all your wordy emails eg the following would create a SearchFolder of email where this property indicated the word count of the message was greater than 1000 words.
  1. [Guid]$psguid = "23239608-685D-4732-9C55-4C95CB4E8E33"  
  2. $LatestMessageWordCount = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ExtendedPropertyDefinition($psguid,"LatestMessageWordCount", [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.MapiPropertyType]::Integer)    
  3. $sfItemSearchFilter = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.SearchFilter+IsGreaterThan($LatestMessageWordCount,1000)   
  4. #$service.ImpersonatedUserId = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ImpersonatedUserId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.ConnectingIdType]::SmtpAddress, $MailboxName)   
  5. $SearchFolder = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.SearchFolder($service);  
  6. $rfRootFolderId = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::MsgFolderRoot,$MailboxName)     
  7. $searchFolder.SearchParameters.RootFolderIds.Add($rfRootFolderId);  
  8. $searchFolder.SearchParameters.Traversal = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.SearchFolderTraversal]::Deep;  
  9. $searchFolder.SearchParameters.SearchFilter = $sfItemSearchFilter  
  10. $searchFolder.DisplayName = $SearchFilterName  
  11. $folderid = new-object Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.FolderId([Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.WellKnownFolderName]::SearchFolders,$MailboxName)     
  12. $sfRoot = [Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder]::Bind($service,$folderid)  
  13. $searchFolder.Save($sfRoot.Id);  

I've put a download of full sample scripts for creating search folder for these two examples here
Labels:

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...
Read more

Sending a Message in Exchange Online via REST from an Arduino MKR1000

This is part 2 of my MKR1000 article, in this previous post  I looked at sending a Message via EWS using Basic Authentication.  In this Post I'll look at using the new Outlook REST API  which requires using OAuth authentication to get an Access Token. The prerequisites for this sketch are the same as in the other post with the addition of the ArduinoJson library  https://github.com/bblanchon/ArduinoJson  which is used to parse the Authentication Results to extract the Access Token. Also the SSL certificates for the login.windows.net  and outlook.office365.com need to be uploaded to the devices using the wifi101 Firmware updater. To use Token Authentication you need to register an Application in Azure https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/add-common-consent-manually  with the Mail.Send permission. The application should be a Native Client app that use the Out of Band Callback urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob. You ...
Read more

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 ...
Read more
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.