There are a number of features in Exchange that can be used in creative ways to solve problems in Exchange as they crop up. Ben Lye recently found a great use for Messaging Records Management when hit hit the problem of a meeting-room mailbox that stopped replying to booking requests. Here he shows how to apply policies that apply to all folders of a particular type, and how to schedule a regular task to do it.

Messaging Records Management (MRM) is a feature of Exchange 2007 which lets administrators define policies to control the storing of e-mail data.  Essentially MRM allows you to create folder-level rules which determine how long messages stored in that folder should be retained.  MRM policies can be applied to default mailbox folders or custom mailbox folders, however applying policies to custom folders requires the use of Enterprise CALs.

MRM can be used to ensure compliance with company policy or legal requirements, or other regulations.  MRM can also be used as an administrative tool...

Recently I had to fix an issue with a meeting room mailbox which had stopped replying to booking requests.  It turned out that the mailbox was over the database’s default Prohibit Send quota, so was unable to send any messages.  The problem was that all the old meeting requests, which had been deleted after they had been processed by the Calendar Attendant, were still in the Deleted Items folder, and that was causing the mailbox to exceed its quota.

The quick-fix was to empty the deleted items folder, but this didn’t really fix the root cause of the problem - the mailbox would continue to grow over time.  Another option was to apply a higher quota, but this would just make the problem come back again later when the new quota was reached.  Ideally I wanted to find a way to make sure that deleted messages in resource mailboxes were permanently removed.

This is where MRM comes in - as well as applying policies for storing e-mail messages, MRM can be used to apply policies to delete e-mail messages.  To solve the problem with my resource mailbox I created an MRM policy which would automatically remove messages from the deleted items folder of all resource mailboxes.

There are five steps to setting up an MRM policy:

1. Choose the folder you want the policy to apply to
2. Create the managed content settings for the folder
3. Create a managed folder mailbox policy
4. Apply the managed folder mailbox policy to the mailboxes
5. Schedule the managed folder assistant to run

To set up the MRM settings and policies you must be delegated the Exchange Organization Administrators role.

I already know that I want to apply the policy to the Deleted Items folder; however I want to create a new managed folder so that if there are future needs for different managed content settings on the Deleted Items folder in other mailboxes, they can be accommodated.  Because the Deleted Items folder is a default folder I can use managed default folders.

To create a new managed default folder we use the New-ManagedFolder cmdlet

With the new managed folder created the next thing to do is create the managed content settings.  The managed content settings define the actual retention criteria.

Creation of the managed content settings can be done through either the Exchange Management Console or the Exchange Management Shell,

I want settings which will remove items from the deleted items folder 30 days after they were received by the resource mailbox.  The deleted messages should be available for recovery according to the database’s standard deleted item recovery policy.

To create the managed content settings we will use the New-ManagedContentSettings cmdlet:

Because a mailbox can only have one managed folder mailbox policy applied managed folder mailbox policies are used to group managed folder content settings so that multiple settings can be applied to a mailbox.  The next step is to create the managed folder mailbox policy.

To create a new policy containing the new deleted item managed content settings we use the New-ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy cmdlet:

The next step is to apply the new managed folder mailbox policy to the resource mailboxes using the Set-Mailbox cmdlet (once for room resources and once for equipment resources).  You will be warned that Outlook clients prior to Outlook 2007 do not support all MRM features, and clients older than Outlook 2003 SP2 are not supported):

The final step is to schedule the managed folder assistant (the process which actually enforces the policy) to run.  This is done with the Set-MailboxServer cmdlet. 

Each Exchange server only has one schedule for the managed folder assistant and you should schedule it to run as often as needed to meet you requirements.  To run the managed folder assistant on all Exchange 2007 mailbox servers daily between 1am and 3am the command would be:

The managed folder assistant can also be started on demand using the Start-ManagedFolderAssistant cmdlet.  Running the managed folder assistant can be a resource-intensive process, and it should be scheduled to run during off-peak hours.

The application of this MRM policy will ensure that my resource mailboxes will remain small, as the content of their deleted items folders will be automatically removed.

More information on Messaging Records Management and messaging policies can be found in Microsoft TechNet:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998599.aspx