en Passant

I needed a quick script to create a series of distribution lists on an Exchange environment. I thought, "Cool, a chance to flex my PowerShell muscles!" From that I found new-qadgroup from the quest tools set and new-distributiongroup from the Exchange tools. After quite a bit of muddling around, I was never able to recreate my script.

Requirements I was trying to meet:

1. Read all data from a CSV file (easy import-csv)

After I got my new PC, the first thing I wanted to do was replace some of the functionality of my dynamic desktop. Primarily this meant a useful Google Search box. My search found 3 gadgets already in play, but to my dismay, they all link to adwords sponsored websites.

So, using Darren's example, I found that gadgets are really just little tiny websites. Hmm, I can code websites. Even really tiny ones.

I am working on a project to recover 30 individual days of email from a clients mailbox. This requires me to restore 30 days worth of backups to the Recovery Storage Group(RSG) on a specific server. I have quickly grown tired of selecting the name from the giant Exmerge list and worked out how to use a batch file to run Exmerge against the RSG.

You may remember my post last year about Craig, my crazy New Zealander cousin and his trek up the Pacific Coast Trail. He completed a walk-through of the 2,600 mile trail (Mexico to Canada) and blogged his entire adventure.

I just got an email letting me know that he has started chapter 2, the entire country of Japan.

If you are like me and don't like listening to the radio during your commute, you'll appreciate podiobooks.com. This site has grown quite rapidly over the last few months and includes tons of all new content. As new authors are finding there is an enormous audience of potential listeners, they are really starting to take advantage of sites like this. Podiobooks sorts content by genre, author and provides great feedback mechanism on each story.

Recently I invested in a pair of Motorola R0kr S9 headphones for my computer at home. Playing games at night after the family is asleep, I'd be the only one to let the dog out. Pause game (brb), take headphones off, run over to patio door, let dog out, reverse, then repeat when the dog wanted back in. That's why when a friend said he wanted this headset, I jumped at the idea.

I hadn't fully realized the power and simplicty of PowerShell until recently. My manager had asked if a script could be written that would take a CSV file of mailbox names, and hide them or unhide them. My co-worker, well-versed in VBScript, generated a 220 line solution that did just that. When I got into the office, I took that as an invitation to flex the PowerShell

We are working on a security review of our Exchange environment. Part of that is to review who has permissions to access what mailboxes.

That's why I put together this little script. Using the Exchange 2007 Management shell, it reads our Exchange 2003 and 2007 environments, processing all the mailboxes. It outputs a single CSV file containing each instance where someone else (not SELF and not a SID) has permissions to a mailbox.

Troubleshooting Outlook delegate permissions is a pain. I found the easiest way to get a user's delegates is to create a profile, open their mailbox and check each person.

That's why I created this script. Using the Quest Powershell addons for AD, it reads the delegate permissions for a specified mailbox, then looks up the display name for each delegate or mailbox they are a delegate for.

A friend is working on a script to pull active LCS accounts from his AD. One last bit of information that he that was troubling him was enabled/disabled AD accounts.