Earlier this week, I was able to upgrade my firm’s research Exchange 2010 environment to SP1.  Ironically, Microsoft released their SP1 FAQ and Known Issues MS Exchange Team Blog post mere minutes after I completed but, fortunately, I did not encounter any of the issues listed in their post.  The upgrade process was very smooth with only a few minor issues.

One very frustrating revelation that I discovered while reading the comments of Microsoft’s original announcement of SP1 was that Online Archive support in Outlook 2007 is not yet available.  Microsoft had previously indicated that this support would come at the same time as SP1 but has now provided guidance that they are planning to announce this support as part of an Outlook 2007 update to be released in the first half of 2011.  This is particularly frustrating because I have many clients that were extremely interested in seeing if Exchange 2010’s native archiving features could work for them and prevent them from having to invest in a third party solution.  These firms will not be moving to Outlook 2010 in the near term and, as a result, the delay of Outlook 2007 Online Archive support is disappointing.

If you are planning to upgrade to SP1 in the near term, I strongly recommend that you thoroughly review the SP1 FAQ post and also consider the following comments.

• There is an Active Directory schema update required to support a number of new features, including mailbox auditing.  Be sure to plan accordingly and, if necessary, you can perform these updates in advance of your SP1 upgrades by running setup /prepareSchema and setup /prepareAD.
• Be careful when upgrading a DAG to minimize any downtime to end users.  I recommend proactively moving all active databases off each node before it is to be upgraded and then disabling automatic activation of any passive copies on that node (via Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus -Server SERVERNAME | Suspend-MailboxDatabaseCopy -ActivationOnly -Confirm:$False -SuspendComment “Exchange 2010 SP1″).  When you’ve finished the upgrade successfully, you can enable automatic activation again (via Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus -Server SERVERNAME | Resume-MailboxDatabaseCopy) and repeat the process on remaining DAG nodes.
• It is important to keep all DAG members at the same service pack level, so plan to upgrade all DAG members during the same maintenance window.  Exchange 2010 RTM can failover databases to Exchange 2010 SP1 but the converse is not possible.
• The one issue I ran into was on one of my DAG nodes, where the Mailbox Role portion of the upgrade failed with an error message of “Couldn’t resolve the user or group “domain.local/Microsoft Exchange Security Groups/Discovery Management.” If the user or group is a foreign forest principal, you must have either a two-way trust or an outgoing trust.”  This group existed in that path and I’ve never had any issues testing discovery features before.  To resolve, I simply had to delete my Discovery Search Mailbox, re-run the SP1 upgrade, and then create a new Discovery Search Mailbox (via New-Mailbox “Discovery Search Mailbox” -Discovery -UserPrincipalName DiscoverySearchMailbox@domain.local).
• I was happy to see that all of my passive mailbox database copies automatically switched to Continuous Replication Block mode (see here for more information) after the SP1 upgrade due to having completely up-to-date replication.  You can view the status of Continuous Replication Block Mode by running the cmdlet Get-Counter -ComputerName SERVERNAME -Counter “\MSExchange Replication(*)\Continuous replication – block mode Active”.  A value of 1 for a passive mailbox database copy indicates it is operating in Continuous Replication Block Mode, where as a value of 0 indicates the copy is operating in Continuous Replication File Mode.  Please note that you need to pay attention to whether the mailbox database copy is active or passive.  An active mailbox database copy will list a value of 0 because it is not receiving replication.

All in all, it was a pretty straightforward upgrade and one that should provide a host of compelling new features for firms of all sizes.

Each year Kraft Kennedy sponsors the annual ILTA golf tournament. It’s typically the Sunday before the conference and a great way to start your week. You can expect a great turnout each year and prizes awarded for top teams and best shots. Who knows, maybe you will get lucky and win our car giveaway on the back 9 – this year was a 2010 Porsche 911.

Here are some photos from this year’s event.

Additional photos can be found here. Special thanks to Cindy Mahoney for these great shots!

We would love to hear what you thought of the event. Thanks for playing and we’ll see you again next August.

Microsoft has just announced that Exchange 2010 Service Pack 1 has been released!  Please refer to http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2010/08/25/455861.aspx for the official announcement and download link.  Additionally, I previously discussed some of the more notable features of SP1 in blog posts here and here.  This is a compelling upgrade for all Exchange 2010 implementations and introduces a number of key new features such as the ability to host archive mailboxes on separate mailbox databases from the primary mailbox, archive support for Outlook 2007 SP2, and Continuous Replication Block Mode.

The 2010 12th Annual ILTA Golf Tournament was a great success! Kraft Kennedy would like to thank our co-sponsors: WorkShare, Cypress Communications and Dell-Equallogic for helping to put on a great event. 

Over 60 people came out and we would like to congratulate the following teams who received trophies this year:

1st Place
Fernando Monteleone, Robinson & Cole LLP
Brandon Monteleone, Robinson & Cole LLP
John Sroka, Younts
Vito Squarciafico, Pullman & Comley


2nd Place
Chris Owens, Kraft Kennedy
John Sawyer, Partridge Snow & Hahn LLP
Dana Rotter, Holme Roberts & Owen
Frank Nelson, Linquist & Vennum PLLP


3rd Place
Joey Perez, American LegalNet, Inc.
Ken Levonaitis, McCarter & English
Mike Walls, US Army
Ted Glutz, Kraft Kennedy


Thanks to everyone who came out and we look forward to seeing you again next year!

It is hot, the end of summer, it must be time for ILTA. This year the annual conference will be held in Las Vegas and the theme is Strategic Unity. Kraft Kennedy will again play an active role in conference. In fact, we will have 13 management and technical consultants attending the conference this year.  We’re also a Platinum Sponsor once again.  We’d love for you to stop by and talk about technology, enter our raffle, or just say hello.  Here is where you can find us:

Exhibit Hall – Booth 310/312

Come by and see us at our booth. Just look for the Porsche Cabriolet. We will be right next to the car…..if someone didn’t win it in the golf tournament. Are you interested in the latest technology, like Office 2010, Windows 7, and VDI?  Come see us in Booth 310/212 where we’ll have desktops, tablets, and even iPads accessing our VDI environment utilizing all of these technologies and more.  How about SharePoint 2010 as a functional DMS?  Or a raffle for your chance to win Bose Noise Reducing Headphones. Our consultants will be in the booth ready to talk about whatever is on your mind.

Briefing Room – Bluethorn 3

Many of our clients are taking advantage of the opportunity to meet with our team of experts to discuss topics that are relevant to them. Our team has experience planning, designing and implementing the latest technologies for law firms and we welcome you to have that same opportunity.  Send Rob Brindell an email: Brindell@kraftkennedy.com to schedule a convenient time for you to meet with us.

12th Annual Golf Tournament

Kraft Kennedy will be sponsoring the 12th Annual Golf Tournament with co-sponsors, Cypress Communications, Workshare software and Dell/EqualLogic. The tournament will be held at Bali Hai golf club and you can register at www.kraftkennedy.eventbrite.com to play Sunday, August 22nd. There will be an 8:00am shotgun start. Breakfast, lunch and refreshments will be served as well as contest prizes and trophies to the winners. Hopefully this year, someone will win a Porsche Cabriolet if they hit a hole in one on the contest hole.

Look who’s Speaking

Kraft Kennedy’s technical and management consultants will be presenting at the following sessions during the conference:

Session Name: Successful Strategies for Deploying Desktop Change
Date and Time: Monday, 8/23/2010 10:30 am – 12:00 pm

Session Name: Tweaking the Windows 7 Desktop with Advanced Configuration Settings
Date and Time: Tuesday, 8/24/2010 1:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Session Name: Co-Managing Projects with Vendors
Date and Time: Thursday, 8/26/2010 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Session Name: Law Department Roundtable
Date and Time: Thursday, 8/26/2010 3:30 pm – 4:30 pm

Session Name: How KM Supports Alternative Fee Arrangements
Date and Time: Thursday, 08/26/2010 10:30 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.

Session Name: The Evolution of Project Management in Law Firms
Date and Time: Tuesday, 09/21/2010 12:00pm-2:00pm

I was always amazed when attorneys first got Outlook 2007, they quickly uncovered that well known bug when trying to print search results from the Tools -> Instant Search -> Advanced Find feature in Table Style.   It’s almost as if they were trying their best to stump the product.

What they may not have realized is that even though the Advanced Find option is listed under the new Instant Search menu, it is really the old iteration of Outlook searching.    There are a couple of workarounds, including copying the Advanced Find search results into a new subfolder, and then printing that folder in Table Style.  However, the best thing they can do is use the Instant Search bar of their mailbox itself.  The syntax of this search can include metadata criteria in addition to keywords, and when using Cached Mode with Windows 7, the search truly is instant.

Outlook 2007 Instant Search

The other nice feature is the suggestion to search All Mail Items if you aren’t happy with the results.    And printing in Table Style from these results works like a charm.

So what about Outlook 2010?  Is this still a bug?  No!  So did Microsoft fix it?  No!  Looks like they simply removed the File menu options in the Advanced Search dialog, so you can’t print from here.   They are sneaky like that…..   See for yourself:

Outlook 2010 - Advanced Find

In summary, for your email searching needs, you should advise your users to begin using the Instant Search feature.  The Advanced Find is dying a slow death.

On August 2nd, Microsoft released an out-of-band patch addressing a critical security flaw in the Windows shell.  This flaw affects all versions of Windows and could allow remote execution of code under certain circumstances.  Obviously, any critical patch released outside of Microsoft’s normal patch release schedule should be treated with a sense of urgency.  We in the Support Practice Group have already taken steps to implement this patch at all of our clients and can happily report that we have not seen any issues whatsoever with the patch, so far.  Additional information on the security flaw and the associated patch is available from Microsoft here.

One of our SPG consultants, Joe Szabo, recently noticed an issue where even though it looked like our BES 5.0 server should be prepopulating users’ new Blackberry devices with 200 previous email messages it, was not doing so.  In the Blackberry Administration console, he expanded BlackBerry Solution Topology > BlackBerry Domain > Component view > Email and checked to ensure that the server was set to prepopulate 200 previous messages.  Joe did some research and found that by default Blackberry only prepopulates messages for new users on their first Enterprise Activation.  It will not prepopulate messages if those existing users activate a new Blackberry device.

To force prepopulation for all users, Joe added the following registry keys:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Agents]
“ForceMsgPrepopOnActivation”=dword:00000001
“ForceMsgPrepopDays”=dword:0000000e
“ForceMsgPrepopMessages”=dword:000002ee

On an x64 server, you would add these entries under:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\WOW6432Node\Research In Motion\BlackBerry Enterprise Server\Agents]

We have confirmed that this works for BES 5.0, but it should work for older BES versions as well.

SharePoint 2010 can be easily deployed to a single box with local administrator accounts using the standalone, out-of-the-box install, but this forces you to use SQL Express 2008 (which comes with SharePoint).  What if you want to do a complete farm install on the box, but stick with local accounts?  Then this becomes a lot more tricky.

The complete install, using the configuration dialogs, will not let you enter local accounts, and will force you to use a domain account.  The best practice seems to be to promote the server to a domain controller, and use domain accounts, however this might not be possible or desired if you’re working in a DMZ, or on a development machine.  Also, you might want to do the complete install so that you can leverage the 10 GB data limit and remote BLOB storage in SQL 2008 Express R2, rather than being stuck to the earlier version of SQL Express which comes with SharePoint.   Luckily, there’s some ways to bypass the domain account requirement by using PowerShell scripting to set up the environment.  I found two helpful blog posts below which get you part of the way there, and I’ll help clarify some of the missing pieces.

The first step is to install SharePoint in complete mode, but not to run the products and technology configuration wizard.  You’ll need to set up the configuration database using PowerShell if you want to use local accounts.  Follow this blog post for setting up the configuration database.

http://sharepoint.microsoft.com/blogs/fromthefield/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=112

You can continue with the configuration wizard after that, and will find that the farm has been configured correctly with the local administrator account.

At this point, everything in central administration should work except for searching.  The search query component will be stuck in “Initializing” state, and will never come online.  If you do any searches on the front-end, you’ll also get a SharePoint error, given the state of the query component.  To fix this, you’ll need to delete the Search Service Application, from the list of service applications, and then create a new one using PowerShell.  Follow this blog post, specifically the “The Search Fix” section, for how to do this in PowerShell.

http://soerennielsen.wordpress.com/2010/07/15/how-to-install-a-sharepoint-2010-complete-server-without-ad/

To clarify the steps for actually running the script, in Step 1 in the article, you actually have to run a command like the following in PowerShell to load the script:

. c:\SetupEnterpriseSearch.ps1

Then you have to run the following command to launch the function:

Start-EnterpriseSearch(”<path>\searchconfig.xml”)

Make sure that you have the correct settings in the XML file ahead of time.  After running this PowerShell script, the search service application should be built and online, and you should be able to build the index and start searching.