2

I need to distribute a rule to all my users. Conditions are subject contains, from and has attachment. I didn't want to reinvent the wheel for this, so I initially tried New-InboxRule from the Exchange 2010 Management Shell. I was able to create the rule, but any rules that were disabled from Outlook were deleted in the process. This behavior appears to be by design.

Next I tried using Exchange Web Services managed API, again I was able to create the rule, but anything that had been disabled in Outlook wasn't visible and was deleted as soon as I saved the new rule.

The I wrote some code to do this using Redemption Data Objects, and discovered it had the same disadvantage.

Just to clarify I have no problem creating the rule using any of these methods. It's the deletion of rules that were previously disabled in Outlook that's a show stopper.

I don't want to waste my time rewriting with CDO as I generally consider RDO to be more robust, I doubt it would work. I don't think Outlook Object Model has the ability to logon to another mailbox, and so too hard to run as a server side job.

I know about rule.dll from the Exchange 5.5 SDK, but due to it's age we'd really like to move away from that. Ideally ESM commands or EWS code is preferred. I'm happy to use Redemption, but it has the same limitation.

Unfortunately MAPI/Extended MAPI programing is beyond my skill set. Is there any way to manage rules that were disabled from Outlook, using any of these interfaces?

Let me know what you think, it would be appreciated.

Steven
  • 141
  • 3

1 Answers1

0

This seems pretty strange; I asked Dmitry Streblechenko, who wrote Redemption, if he knew what was going on and he was puzzled too. What happens if you create the rule manually using Outlook in one mailbox? Why are the disabled rules disabled in the first place?

paulr
  • 2,083
  • 13
  • 11
  • Paul, Thanks for getting back to me. Obviously it's been some time since I looked at this. The rules are disabled because the user unchecked them from Outlook. The main problem is I can't distribute my rule without the risk of overwriting something the user wanted but but might have been disabled. I often create disabled rules so I can run them on demand. BTW, I did start working on it using OOM, and was able to see the disabled rule, which I couldn't with the other methods. I never finished, as management lost interest and other priorities took over. – Steven Jan 31 '15 at 00:47