Category Archives: Misc

MEC Airlift 2022 #WeAreMEC

Posted on by
2

It seems ages ago – 8½ years to be exact – that the most recent Microsoft Exchange Conference took place in Austin in 2014. Much has happened since then, Exchange Online became a thing and there seemed to be no need for Microsoft to host an Exchange themed conference any longer. All this while events around products such as SharePoint did not slow down a single bit.

Then the pandemic happened, and we went to zero in-person conferences. It did not take long online/virtual/digital conferences took off. But alas, no Exchange conference. Until 2022 arrived, and Microsoft announced continued commitment to Exchange on-premises. Now, early in the FY22/23, a free 2-day online event will take place on September 13th & 14th, the Microsoft Exchange Conference Community Technical Airlift 2022. Target audience are IT professionals working with Exchange Online/On-Premises as well people developing solutions that integrate with Exchange. While nothing comes close to the experience and value of an in-person event, MEC 2022 will take place online. I am guessing that if this event is a success, and there is enough content to talk about as well as interest, that might switch to becoming at least a hybrid event, with a mix of an in-person and online audience, similar to Microsoft Ignite this year.

The agenda for MEC 2022 looks very promising, with sessions from both the Exchange product group as well as some very smart people from the Exchange community. Not totally surprising, there are sessions on the demise of Basic Authentication and how to deal with that, hosted by Greg Taylor. Also have a look at Scott Schnoll’s famous Exchange Tips & Tricks, or Jeff Mealiffe talking about connectivity. The event kicks off with a welcome keynote with Perry Clarke and Rajesh Jha. You can still submit questions for this “Geek Out with Perry!” here.

Yours truly will also present at MEC, presenting “Bringing your Exchange Scripts into the Modern Age” on September 14th, 9:00am PDT. Note that MEC sessions will be recorded, and will be made available for on-demand viewing after the event, which is great in case you cannot attend sessions as they happen. You can still register for MEC at https://aka.ms/MECAirlift.

If I do not “see” you at MEC, there is also an opportunity to have an in-person chat next week in Atlanta, where I will be attending – not presenting as I missed the submit deadline – The Experts Conference, or just TEC. It seems you can still register, but Anyway, it is good to see Exchange themed events pick-up and confereces in general returning to a certain level of pre-pandemic numbers, as there is enough to talk about, discuss and learn from others.

MVP’s around the World (2022)

Posted on by
2

A new Microsoft MVP award cycle, a new moment to have a look at the MVP statistics. Below numbers are taken from the public MVP site. July 1st is normally the day of the award cycle, but this year got delayed for a few days due to unknown circumstances. Because people get awarded every month, the comparison to July of every year should give an idea of the yearly trend.

Few points of attention:

  • Apparently, during the award cycle MVP’s located in Russia or Belarus were removed, including MVP’s that were awarded in the first half of 2022 and thus not up for renewal.
  • 19 anonymous MVP awardees do not disclose location. Those are not represented in below numbers.
  • The Office Development category was rebranded M365 Development.
  • The Office Apps & Services category was rebranded M365 Apps & Services.

Awardees per Category

The following table contains the awardees per award category from July of 2019 up to 2022, plus change percentage. It therefor does not reflect on changes during the year (people newly awarded or moving to Microsoft). I will leave the interpretation up to you.

ExpertiseJul’19Jul’20%Jul’21%Jul’22%
Cloud and Datacenter Management232209-10%2195%164-25%
Microsoft Azure40946313%53415%5462%
M365 Apps & Services4915124%5569%492-12%
Business Applications16624045%32335%3519%
Data Platform3323588%3929%364-7%
Developer Technologies6446978%77010%715-7%
Enterprise Mobility1061037%13318%14912%
AI8412245%13813%128-7%
M365 Development476436%698%59-14%
Windows Development119110-8%1209%92-23%
Windows and Devices for IT5743-25%42-2%457%
Total no. of Awards268729319%329612%3105-6%
Total no. of MVP’s263428508%322413%3024-6%

Note: The difference between total number of awards and total number of MVP’s is caused by MVP’s awarded in multiple categories. A total of 124 MVP’s were awarded in two or more categories.

M365 Apps & Services per Country

When zooming in on the M365 Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below, including the % change compared to last year. As you might notice, there are quiet a number of countries without MVP’s compared to last year.

CountryNumberCountryNumberCountryNumberCountryNumber
AUS26 (-4%)FRA16 (-34%)NZL6 (0%)ESP10 (-34%)
AUT3 (-25%)DEU30 (-4%)NGA4 (0%)LKA0 (-100%)
BEL5 (0%)GHA1 (0%)NOR5 (-29%)SWE8 (-20%)
BIH1 (0%)GRC1 (0%)PAK1 (0%)CHE2 (-50%)
BRA12 (-15%)HUN1 (-50%)PER1 (0%)TWN4 (0%)
BGR3 (0%)IND10 (-29%)POL5 (-38%)THA2 (0%)
KHM1 (0%)IRL1 (-75%)PRT3 (0%)NLD22 (4%)
CAN34 (-15%)ISR3 (0%)RUS0 (-100%)TUR2 (0%)
CHN19 (0%)ITA4 (0%)SAU1 (-50%)UKR2 (0%)
COL5 (-29%)JPN17 (-15%)SEN1 (0%)ARE1 (-50%)
HRV5 (0%)KOR14 (-18%)SRB0 (-100%)GBR37 (-16%)
CZE2 (0%)MKD2 (0%)SGP4 (0%)USA112 (-16%)
DNK5 (-29%)MYS1 (0%)SVK1 (0%)URY1 (0%)
EGY1 (0%)MEX8 (0%)SVN2 (0%)VNM1 (0%)
SLV1 (0%)MMR1 (0%)ZAF4 (0%)  
FIN5 (-17%)NPL0 (-100%)    

If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.

Basic Authentication: End of an Era

Posted on by
Reply

1sep2022: Added announcement regarding Jan2023 extension

Back in September 2019, Microsoft announced it would start to turn off Basic Authentication for non-SMTP protocols in Exchange Online on tenants where the authentication protocol was detected as inactive. This is part of an overall movement to deprecate the less secure Basic Authentication, which is unfit to face the security challenges of the modern world, being subject to things like password spray attacks. It’s modern successor, modern authentication or OAuth2, uses a token and claim based mechanism contrary to sending accounts and passwords, and is the preferred authentication method. When combined with Azure AD for authentication, Modern Authentication also supports features such as Multi-Factor Authentication or Conditional Access.

The original date for disabling of Basic Authentication was October 13th, 2020. Then the world had other matters to deal with, and Microsoft extended the timelines. After initially postponing turning Basic Authentication off to second half of 2021, the ‘start date’ for permanently turning the lights off for Basic Authentication was set to October 1st, 2022, as per this article on Docs and MC286990 in the Message Center. Mind the ‘start’ in start date, as flicking the switch for millions of tenants takes time before it becomes effective on your tenant. Organizations do need to anticipate on this change for the first of October.

On September 1st, Microsoft published an update to these timelines as there were still some cases were organizations could not make the deadline of October 1st. To meet these customers “one last time”, organizations can now use the self-service diagnostics to extend disabling of Basic Authentication to January 2023. This needs to be done per protocol, also if organizations requested opt-out or re-enabled Basic Authentication earlier. Details as well as instructions and revised timelines on Basic Authentication switching off are laid out in a new article.

Until then, organizations can (re-)enable Basic Authentication for the protocols they need, using the self-help system in the Microsoft 365 admin center. After entering “Diag: Enable Basic Auth in EXO” in the problem search query, the request will be checked, and Basic Authentication will get enabled. But with the end of support for Basic Authentication, so will this temporary workaround. On a side note, per end of 2020, newly created tenants already have basic authentication disabled by means of security defaults – if those organizations require Basic Authentication for some reason, they will also need to reconfigure security defaults which by default is an all or nothing option for all protocols.

So, with the doomsday counter ticking away for Basic Authentication, what are the consequences for Exchange related workloads organizations might wonder. In this article, I will address some of these concerns.

Update: Microsoft meanwhile has disclosed much awaited details on changes in the native Mail app on iOS. This update is effective per iOS 15.6, and adds support for migrating configured accounts from using Basic Authentication to using Modern Authentication (OAuth). For this work work seamlessly and without user interruption, some configuration is needed on the back-end. Details can be found in a separate article here on this specific topic.

Click here to read the full article on ENow Solutions blog. Note that the ENow article does not include later updates, such as the latest timeline revisions and iOS account conversion, both mentioned above.

Annual Report 2021

Posted on by
Reply

stats chart

Happy new year to all my dear readers and followers. While some thought after 2020 things would improve soon, 2021 proved to be another year of dealing with measures. That said, 2021 was not very different compared to 2020 from a work perspective, with many organizations now professionalizing their quickly adopted digital transformation, further normalization for work from home scenarios. The year again proved to be a challenge for those busy working on customer projects while catering to the community as well. In the end, it is all about finding a balance, especially if you are working from home and the rest of the household is as well.

Now, without further ado, here are some of this blog’s and GitHub’s top entries for 2021.

General Stats

  • Number of views: 271,751 (3,086,610 all-time)
  • Unique visitors: 168,011 (1,627,860 all-time)
  • Number of posts: 17 (647 total)
  • Followers: 508
  • Busiest day: March 4, 2021 (5,616)
  • Popular time of day: Wednesday, 3pm

Popular blogs

Not surprisingly, posts related to the Hafnium security updates lead the way in 2021:

POPULAR Blogs from 2021
Security Update Exchange 2010-2019 (Mar2021)
Security Updates Exchange 2013-2019 (Jul2021)
Security Recommendation Exchange 2016-2019
Security Updates Exchange 2013-2019 (Nov2021)
Security Updates Exchange 2013-2019 (Oct2021)

While I published some additional scripts on my GitHub repository, some scripts like the script to download Ignite sessions or remove duplicate items from Exchange mailboxes remain popular. I performed a total of 144 updates on the scripts, and have 102 people following my GitHub profile.

Script
Connect-Office365Services
Get-EventSession
Remove-DuplicateItems
Remove-MessageClassItems
Invoke-Unarchive

Top Visitor Countries

Country
United States of America
Germany
United Kingdom
The Netherlands
India

MVPs around the World (2021)

Posted on by
Reply

A new Microsoft MVP award cycle, a new moment to have a look at the MVP statistics. Below numbers are taken from the public MVP site. While July 1st is the first day of the new award cycle, it usually is recommended to wait few days for the site and data behind it to get updated. and new and renewed awardees turning in their Non-Disclosure Agreement before showing up on the site. Because people get awarded every month, the comparison to July of every year should give an idea of the yearly trend.

Disclaimer: A percentage of MVP awardees are anonymous, and do not disclose information regarding expertise or location. There are currently 133 anonymous MVPs, and they are not taken into account in below statistics.

The following table contains the awardees per award category from July of 2019, 2020 and 2021, and change percentage compared to the year before. I will leave the interpretation up to you.

ExpertiseJul2019Jul2020%Jul2021%
Cloud and Datacenter Management232209-10%2195%
Microsoft Azure40946313%53415%
Office Apps & Services4915124%5569%
Business Applications16624045%32335%
Data Platform3323588%3929%
Developer Technologies6446978%77010%
Enterprise Mobility1061137%13318%
AI8412245%13813%
Office Development476436%698%
Windows Development119110-8%1209%
Windows and Devices for IT5743-25%42-2%
Total268729319%329612%
Count263428498%322313%

Note: The total number of MVPs doesn’t equal the total number of awardees, as MVPs can be awarded in more than one category. A total of 77 MVPs are awarded in two or more categories.

When zooming in on the Office Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below, including the % change compared to last year. As you might notice, there are quiet a number of new countries being represented: Ghana, Greece, Peru, Senegal and Vietnam. This supports the current Diversity & Inclusion mindset, and in my opinion is a good thing.

CountryNumberCountryNumberCountryNumberCountryNumber
AUS26 (8%)FRA22 (22%)NZL6 (0%)LKA1 (0%)
AUT3 (0%)DEU30 (25%)NGA3 (50%)SWE10 (11%)
BEL5 (0%)GHA1 (100%)NOR6 (0%)CHE3 (0%)
BIH1 (0%)GRC1 (100%)PAK1 (0%)TWN4 (0%)
BRA10 (25%)HUN2 (0%)PER1 (100%)THA2 (0%)
BGR3 (50%)IND12 (-8%)POL6 (0%)NLD22 (0%)
KHM1 (0%)IRL2 (100%)PRT3 (0%)TUR2 (0%)
CAN34 (3%)ISR3 (200%)RUS9 (0%)UKR2 (0%)
CHN17 (0%)ITA5 (0%)SAU1 (0%)ARE2 (100%)
COL6 (20%)JPN20 (0%)SEN1 (100%)GBR38 (15%)
HRV5 (0%)KOR14 (16%)SRB1 (0%)USA131 (6%)
CZE2 (0%)MKD2 (0%)SGP4 (33%)URY1 (0%)
DNK6 (0%)MYS1 (0%)SVK1 (0%)VNM1 (100%)
EGY1 (0%)MEX7 (40%)SVN2 (0%)
SLV1 (0%)MMR1 (0%)ZAF4 (0%)
FIN6 (50%)NPL1 (0%)ESP14 (16%)

And finally, the number of Office Apps & Services and total number of MVP’s over the last years.

OAS & Total PER CYCLEJul2017Jul2018Jul2019Jul2020Jul2021
Office Apps & Services MVPs449383491512535
% Change-15%28%4%4%
Total MVPs34903030263428493223
% Change-13%-13%8%13%

If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.

Annual Report 2020

Posted on by
Reply

stats chart

Happy new year to all my dear readers and followers. And what a crazy year 2020 has been, where the pandemic forced the hand of those delaying digital transformation. The uptake of work from home and supporting technologies and adoption was phenomenal, and professionally it has been an extremely busy year. As you can spend your time only once, the year again proved to be a challenge for those busy working on customer projects while tending to the community as well. In the end, it is all about finding a balance, especially if you are working from home and the rest of the household is as well. And then there’s this cat.

That said, I thought it would be nice to kick 2021 off with reinstating the annual report. I’d like to share with you some of blog’s statistics of 2020, the blog’s 10th year running. The statistics come directly from the site and without additional observations, apart from that for some reason looking things up related to Exchange 2010 still remains to be very popular.

General 2020 Stats

  • Number of views: 300,370 (2,811,923 all-time)
  • Unique visitors: 129,905 (1,457,892 all-time)
  • Number of posts: 20 (629 total)
  • Followers: 450
  • Busiest day: November 18th (3,496 views – Teams Custom Background referrals)
  • Most time: Wednesday, 4pm
  • Top post of 2020: Configuring Exchange Online with IMAP & OAuth2

Most popular blogs from 2020

Apart from the Versions, Builds and Dates, Schema Versions and Toolkit pages, the newly introduced Teams Custom Backgrounds page stood out this year with 13,117 in just a few months. When it comes to blogs published in 2020, the most viewed posts are:

Blog from 2020
Configuring Exchange Online with IMAP & OAuth2
Exchange Online Management using EXOv2 module
Outlook Connectivity changes per Nov2021
Security Updates Exchange 2010-2019 (Dec2020)
Holiday Season Teams background

Most popular all-time blogs

BLOG (All-Time)
Limiting Exchange 2010 Database Cache /
Limiting Exchange 2010 SP1 Database Cache
Exchange ActiveSync and Inheritable Permissions issue
TargetAddress, ExternalEmailAddress and Set As External
The Attribute, the Myth, the legacyExchangeDN
Exchange Message Size Limits

Top Scripts in 2020 (GitHub)

Script
Connect-Office365Services
Get-EventSession
Remove-DuplicateItems
Install-Exchange15
Remove-MessageClassItems

Top visitor countries in 2020

Country
United States
United Kingdom
Germany
Netherlands
Canada

Top referrers in 2020

Referer
Google
Bing
Spiceworks (community)
Twitter
Practical365 (blog)

Most used search terms in 2020

Search term(s)
exchange versions
exchange 2010 end of life
exchange schema versions
office 2016 support lifecycle
exchange version 15.1

Holiday Season Teams background

Posted on by
Reply

Update: Per request, added SharePoint and OneDrive, and did some manual corrections.

A really short post on a Ugly Sweater background with Exchange, Teams and Outlook theme to use during those conference calls end of December. Enjoy!

Like it or not, leave feedback in the comments. Also, suggestions are welcomed. In case you are not aware, I keep a set of custom background for you to enjoy here.

MVPs around the World (2020)

Posted on by
4

With great honor and joy I can announce that I have been awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award for the seventh consecutive year, again in the category Office Apps & Services. Congratulations to other new and re-awarded MVPs as well, and kudos to the MVP program in undertaking the monstrous task of reviewing and evaluating thousands of contributions every award cycle.

With another award cycle also comes the time to have a look at the MVP statistics. Below numbers are taken from the public MVP site. July 3rd is chosen as the first days the site gets updated and new awardees need to turn in their NDA before they show up on the site.

Because people can get awarded each month, the comparison to July 3rd of every year indicates only yearly trend. Therefor we’ll also compare the numbers to those of June to see the impact on long-term MVP population, as awardees from January are only up for consideration in July 2021 for example.

From the numbers, it is clear that this cycle the number of MVPs went a bit down from 2.998 in June 2020 to 2.850 now (-5%), but it is higher than the 2.634 (+8%) of July 2019.

The following table contains the changes per award category from July 2019 and June 2020 to July 2020. I will leave the interpretation up to you.

ExpertiseJuly 2019June 2020ChangeJuly 2020Change
Cloud and Datacenter Management2322424%209-10%
Microsoft Azure40945511%46313%
Office Apps & Services4915308%5124%
Business Applications16623441%24045%
Data Platform33237513%3588%
Developer Technologies64474215%6978%
Enterprise Mobility10611912%1137%
AI8410930%12245%
Office Development476028%6436%
Windows Development1191233%110-8%
Windows and Devices for IT5755-4%43-25%
Total Awards2687304413%29319%
Total MVPs2634299814%28498%

Note: The total number of MVPs doesn’t equal the total number of awardees, as MVPs can be awarded in more than one category; there are now 82 people awarded in multiple categories’; an increase of 57% compared to June 2019.

When zooming in on the Office Apps & Services category, the awards per country are shown below, including change compared to last year. Be advised that 26 OAS MVPs are anonymous or have profiles without information on residency.

image
CountryNumberCountryNumberCountryNumber
Australia24 (20%)India13 (0%)Saudi Arabia1 (0%)
Austria3 (0%)Ireland1 (0%)Serbia1 (0%)
Belgium5 (-38%)Israel1 (0%)Singapore3 (0%)
Bosnia and Herzegovina1 (0%)Italy5 (-17%)Slovakia1 (0%)
Brazil8 (-20%)Japan20 (-10%)Slovenia2 (0%)
Bulgaria2 (0%)Korea12 (0%)South Africa4 (-20%)
Cambodia1 (100%)Luxembourg1 (100%)Spain12 (50%)
Canada33 (6%)Macedonia, FYRO2 (0%)Sri Lanka1 (0%)
China17 (6%)Malaysia1 (0%)Sweden9 (80%)
Colombia5 (25%)Mexico5 (0%)Switzerland3 (50%)
Croatia5 (25%)Myanmar1 (100%)Taiwan4 (0%)
Czech Republic2 (0%)Nepal1 (0%)Thailand2 (-34%)
Denmark6 (0%)New Zealand6 (0%)The Netherlands22 (4%)
Egypt1 (0%)Nigeria2 (100%)Turkey2 (0%)
El Salvador1 (0%)Norway6 (0%)Ukraine2 (0%)
Finland4 (33%)Pakistan1 (-50%)United Arab Emirates1 (-50%)
France18 (-10%)Poland6 (50%)United Kingdom33 (17%)
Germany24 (-4%)Portugal3 (50%)United States123 (2%)
Hungary2 (0%)Russia9 (12%)Uruguay1 (0%)

And last, the number of Office Apps & Services and total number of MVP’s over the last years, before and after the award cycle.

June
2017		July
2017		June
2018		July
2018		March
2019		July
2019		June
2020		July
2020
OSS532449490383622491530512
-16%9%-22%62%-21%8%-3%
Total41343490381530303205263429982849
-16%9%-21%6%-18%14%-5%

On a final note, the above data is static; some MVPs have build great dashboards which allow you to work with the data more interactively (if they have updated their data set, that is). Some noteworthy mentions:

If you have questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below.

Security Updates Exchange 2013-2019 (Nov2019)

Posted on by
15

Exchange2019LogoA quick blog on recently published security updates for Exchange Server 2013 up to Exchange Server 2019. These fixes address the following vulnerabilities:

  • CVE-2019-1373: Microsoft Exchange Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

The CVE documents contain more details on the vulnerabilities. The exploits can be fixed by single security update, which you can find in the table below per current Exchange version.

ExchangeDownloadBuildKBSupersedes
Exchange 2019 CU3Download15.2.464.7 KB4523171KB4515832
Exchange 2019 CU2Download15.2.397.9 KB4523171 KB4515832
Exchange 2016 CU14Download15.1.1847.5 KB4523171 KB4515832
Exchange 2016 CU13Download15.1.1779.7 KB4523171 KB4515832
Exchange 2013 CU23Download15.0.1497.4 KB4523171 KB4509409

Be advised that the Security Updates for Exchange 2013-2019 are Cumulative Update level specific. Unfortunately, the security update carries the same name for different CUs, and you cannot apply the update for Exchange 2016 CU14 to Exchange 2016 CU13. I would suggest tagging the Cumulative Update in the file name when you store it, e.g. Exchange2016-CU14-KB4523171-x64-en.msp.

As with any patch or update, I’d recommend to apply this in a acceptance environment first, prior to implementing it in production.

Exchange Updates – Sep. 2019

Posted on by
Reply

Exchange2019LogoToday, the Exchange Team released the quarterly Cumulative Updates for Exchange Server 2019 as well as Exchange 2016. The fixes in each release, product downloads are described below:

VersionBuildKBDownloadUMLPSchema
Exchange 2019 CU315.2.464.5KB4514141VLSC N
Exchange 2016 CU1415.1.1847.3KB4514140DownloadUMLPN

Exchange 2019 CU3 fixes:

  • 4515257 Hash mismatch is reported for Exchange DLLs in the bin directory of Exchange Server 2019
  • 4502159 Adding or removing mailbox permission in EAC doesn’t address the msExchDelegateListLink attribute in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515276 Room mailbox accepts a meeting as “Free” if a booking delegate is set in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515275 Enable Get/Restore-RecoverableItems to work with Purges folder in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515274 AutodiscoverV2 request returns REST API endpoint not AutoDiscoverV1 endpoint in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515269 SentToMemberOf shows every recipient type not distribution groups when you create transport rule in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515272 Message is blocked in “SMTP Delivery to Mailbox” queue if exchange server is added in groups of a child domain in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515271 Can’t convert a migrated remote user mailbox to shared in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515270 SubmissionQueueLengthMonitor shows “System.ArgumentException: Transition timeout…” in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515267 NDR occurs when you resend message from alternate journaling mailbox to journaling mailbox in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515265 Removing In-Place Hold doesn’t work for mailboxes in different domains in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515264 FindPeople request from Skype for Business on Mac fails with “Invalid Shape Specification” in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515263 Hide the “Validate-MailFlowThroughFrontDoor” command for Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515262 Enable Remove-MobileDevice to delete mobile devices after migrating to Office 365 from Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515261 Can’t copy eDiscovery search results for mailboxes with Exchange online archives in Office 365 in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515273 Mailbox auditing fails when using SHA1Managed in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515266 Infinite loop in Recurrence.GetNumberOfYearsBetween() with the Japanese calendar in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4520319 S/MIME signed reply draft behaves like the first message in conversation in Exchange Server 2019 and 2016
  • 4515832 Description of the security update for Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 and 2016: September 10, 2019

Exchange 2016 CU14 fixes:

  • 4515255 â€śX-InnerException: Microsoft.Mapi.MapiExceptionRpcServerTooBusy” error when you try to use a mailbox in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515254 Event 1009 frequently occurs in application logs for lagged database copies in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4502159 Adding or removing mailbox permission in EAC doesn’t address the msExchDelegateListLink attribute in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515276 Room mailbox accepts a meeting as “Free” if a booking delegate is set in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515275 Enable Get/Restore-RecoverableItems to work with Purges folder in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515274 AutodiscoverV2 request returns REST API endpoint not AutoDiscoverV1 endpoint in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515269 SentToMemberOf shows every recipient type not distribution groups when creating transport rule in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515272 Message is blocked in “SMTP Delivery to Mailbox” queue if exchange server is added in groups of a child domain in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515271 Can’t convert a migrated remote user mailbox to shared in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515270 SubmissionQueueLengthMonitor shows “System.ArgumentException: Transition timeout…” in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515267 NDR occurs when you resend message from alternate journaling mailbox to journaling mailbox in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515265 Removing In-Place Hold doesn’t work for mailboxes in different domains in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515264 FindPeople request from Skype for Business on Mac fails with “Invalid Shape Specification” in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515263 Hide the “Validate-MailFlowThroughFrontDoor” command for Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515262 Enable Remove-MobileDevice to delete mobile devices after migrating to Office 365 from Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515261 Can’t copy eDiscovery search results for mailboxes with Exchange online archives in Office 365 in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515273 Mailbox auditing fails when you use SHA1Managed in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515266 Infinite loop in Recurrence.GetNumberOfYearsBetween() with the Japanese calendar in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4520319 S/MIME signed reply draft behaves like the first message in conversation in Exchange Server 2016
  • 4515832 Description of the security update for Microsoft Exchange Server 2019 and 2016: September 10, 2019

Notes:

  • These Cumulative Updates do not contain schema changes compared to their previous Cumulative Update.
  • When upgrading from an n-2 or earlier version of Exchange, or an early version of the .NET Framework, consult Upgrade Paths for CU’s & .NET.
  • Don’t forget to put the Exchange server in maintenance mode prior to updating. Regardless, setup will put the server in server-wide offline mode post-analysis, before making actual changes.
  • When using Exchange hybrid deployments or Exchange Online Archiving (EOA), you are required to delay installing at most one version (n-1).
  • If you want to speed up the update process for systems without internet access, you can follow the procedure described here to disable publisher’s certificate revocation checking.
  • Cumulative Updates can be installed directly; no need to install RTM prior to installing Cumulative Updates.
  • Once installed, you can’t uninstall a Cumulative Update nor any of the installed Exchange server roles.
  • The order of installation shouldn’t matter with the “every server is an island” concept, yet recommended is to upgrade internet-facing, non-internet-facing servers first, followed by Edge Transports.

Caution:

As for any update, I recommend to thoroughly test updates in a test environment prior to implementing them in production. When you lack such facilities, hold out a few days and monitor the comments on the original publication or forums for any issues.