Recently, we had an outage due to heat in some of our switch closets.  Not only did this generate a lot of alarm traffic for IT Systems…but it also generated a lot of alarm traffic for HVAC and even other systems as well.  In the end, we sent out so many automated notifications (emails) to pagers and cell phones that we got rate controlled and then subsequently blacklisted due to the massive volume of emails heading out of our SMTP IP Address.  This blacklist meant that email was brought to a screeching halt in the enterprise.  I had to have our Network Team fail us over to our secondary SMTP...

This almost ranks right up there with my Ghost Delegates head scratcher of an issue.  Now we’re talking about ghost messages.  In my case, an automated system was sending out a notification email to a user in our enterprise environment.  I could track the message through our SPAM Firewall showing the hand-off (RECEIVE stamp) of the message to our Exchange 2007 Transport Server and then a DELIVER notification of the message being placed inside the mail store. In other words:  The message was actually being delivered into the user inbox…but they never appeared there to the end user.  No...

Some of my users will submit tickets where they are missing ‘favorite’ calenders when they go into Outlook.  This is not a huge problem in itself because they can just browse to it via Public Folders (or whatever resource they add it from).  The main problem is that a user cannot add a favorite back after it has disappeared.  It’s more a frustration…because it’s not like the calendar is gone…it’s just not one click accessible. So, I did quite a bit of research to solve this the first time it reared its head with no fix found.  I’ve had this happen...

Ever had a new user appear in the “All Users” Address list that you can access via your Address Book but that DO NOT APPEAR inside the Global Address Book (GAL)? These are most likely users that have only recently been added…because the minute that Exchange does it’s standard maintenance window, it will most likely update.   But what if, like me, you need to have it update right away due to something like a BlackBerry server? Through trial and error, I’ve found out WHY the user is not put into the Global Address List right away and how you can force it there.  Please...

Ever wanted to stop managing a distribution group because you get 90 million requests every other day to add someone or remove someone from said group?  Ok, maybe not 90 million but it has to be close to 80 million right?  Sometimes you will run across a distribution group that changes its membership frequently.  The best solution I’ve found is to find a point of contact for that group who will be able to manage the membership.  This means less requests to you in the future. Normally, what I do is add the person as the ‘owner’ under the properties of the distribution group. ...