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)
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:
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.
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.
Expertise
July 2019
June 2020
Change
July 2020
Change
Cloud and Datacenter Management
232
242
4%
209
-10%
Microsoft Azure
409
455
11%
463
13%
Office Apps & Services
491
530
8%
512
4%
Business Applications
166
234
41%
240
45%
Data Platform
332
375
13%
358
8%
Developer Technologies
644
742
15%
697
8%
Enterprise Mobility
106
119
12%
113
7%
AI
84
109
30%
122
45%
Office Development
47
60
28%
64
36%
Windows Development
119
123
3%
110
-8%
Windows and Devices for IT
57
55
-4%
43
-25%
Total Awards
2687
3044
13%
2931
9%
Total MVPs
2634
2998
14%
2849
8%
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.
Country
Number
Country
Number
Country
Number
Australia
24 (20%)
India
13 (0%)
Saudi Arabia
1 (0%)
Austria
3 (0%)
Ireland
1 (0%)
Serbia
1 (0%)
Belgium
5 (-38%)
Israel
1 (0%)
Singapore
3 (0%)
Bosnia and Herzegovina
1 (0%)
Italy
5 (-17%)
Slovakia
1 (0%)
Brazil
8 (-20%)
Japan
20 (-10%)
Slovenia
2 (0%)
Bulgaria
2 (0%)
Korea
12 (0%)
South Africa
4 (-20%)
Cambodia
1 (100%)
Luxembourg
1 (100%)
Spain
12 (50%)
Canada
33 (6%)
Macedonia, FYRO
2 (0%)
Sri Lanka
1 (0%)
China
17 (6%)
Malaysia
1 (0%)
Sweden
9 (80%)
Colombia
5 (25%)
Mexico
5 (0%)
Switzerland
3 (50%)
Croatia
5 (25%)
Myanmar
1 (100%)
Taiwan
4 (0%)
Czech Republic
2 (0%)
Nepal
1 (0%)
Thailand
2 (-34%)
Denmark
6 (0%)
New Zealand
6 (0%)
The Netherlands
22 (4%)
Egypt
1 (0%)
Nigeria
2 (100%)
Turkey
2 (0%)
El Salvador
1 (0%)
Norway
6 (0%)
Ukraine
2 (0%)
Finland
4 (33%)
Pakistan
1 (-50%)
United Arab Emirates
1 (-50%)
France
18 (-10%)
Poland
6 (50%)
United Kingdom
33 (17%)
Germany
24 (-4%)
Portugal
3 (50%)
United States
123 (2%)
Hungary
2 (0%)
Russia
9 (12%)
Uruguay
1 (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
OSS
532
449
490
383
622
491
530
512
-16%
9%
-22%
62%
-21%
8%
-3%
Total
4134
3490
3815
3030
3205
2634
2998
2849
-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:
A 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.
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.
Today, 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:
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 “X-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.
A quick blog on recently published security updates for Exchange Server 2013 up to Exchange Server 2019. These fixes address the following vulnerabilities: