How to Implement Address Book Policies in Office 365/Exchange 2013/2016 Effectively

• ABP features are only available to customers with Office 365 for Enterprise (‘E’ plans) and Education (‘A’ plans)
• The default for Office 365 for Enterprise customers is to allow 250 GALs, 250 OABs, 250 ABPs and 1000 ALs.

What is Address Book Policy with short history

In Layman’s Term Every Department will See their own Global Address list.Commercial GAL segregation wasn’t Supported in Exchange 2003/2007.It was supported in HMC 4.5 – Exchange 2007/Exchange 2010 /hosted – Both the products were dropped by Microsoft.From Exchange 2010 SP2 Global Address list segregation was supported commercially and internally,It was easy to view and manage through Management Console.For commercial guys it was easy to integrate with control panel as everything can be created and managed using powershell.

You need to Perform Some Check Lists before implementing Address Book Policies in your environment.

1. Address book Policies will work only on Exchange 2010 Service Pack 3 or later severs.

2. Exchange Servers should not be installed on (Global Catalog Servers)GC or (Domain Controllers) DC where it will break the Address book policies while viewing from Outlook Clients.

3.Any Client Device or Client Software which can access Active Directory directly for Directory Access then ABP will fail to work

For Example like hard coding Outlook to Domain controllers, Also old clients Entourage 2008,Outlook for Mac 2011

4. Outlook clients should be at least – Outlook 2007 or later

Let see some different Scenarios,Before Getting into Address book Policies we should first plan how we are going to Segregate the users

There are Various filters you can use to segregate users,Refer Link for Filterable properties– https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb738157(v=exchg.150).aspx

But we have something called Custom Attributes,We have up to 15 Custom attributes where we can use to Segregate users

Personally , Segregation is much more easier and Easily manageable using Custom attributes ,In Simple Words Experts Prefer Custom Attributes, Still some companies are already segregated using Company, Department,City. Go through whole article so that you can decide which will be suitable for you. you should decide wisely here. Cause it should be flexible for you while you expand then environment.

Scenario 1: Two Separate Entities in One Exchange Organization

or Two Separate Departments in One Exchange Organization.

Motive of the Scenario Organization A users should not be export to Organization B users.

First we will plan to segregate the Users

For Organization A , I will use Custom attribute1

Custom attribute1 = OrgA

For Organization B ,  I will use Custom attribute2

Custom attribute2 = OrgB

We got to Create a Separate Address book policy for Every Organization.Where each organization will be assigned with their own Address book policy.

Before creating a Address Book Policy

We need to do four tasks for each Organizations to segregate them using Address Book Policies

1. Global Address list

2. Address list

3. Rooms list

4. Offline Address book

Once we create Address book policies and assign to users, Note that each User can have only one Address book policy.

Note : Address Book Policy Routing agent : GAL1 user can view the information residing in contact cards of the GAL2 user. To avoid that

you can configure the ABP Routing Agent, If that level of separation is not required . you can safely skip these process.

When the ABP Routing agent is installed and configured, users that are assigned to different GALs appear as external recipients and they can’t view external recipients’ contact cards.

Use below link if your going to enable it. Otherwise please continue.

https://www.azure365pro.com/install-and-configure-the-address-book-policy-routing-agent-in-office365exchange-20132016/

1. Creating a Global Address list

Need Exchange Management Shell to create Global Address list,

Where users with Custom attribute 1 with value ORGA will be showing up in their Address list,

New-GlobalAddressList -Name "ORGA-GAL" -RecipientFilter {(CustomAttribute1 -eq "ORGA")}

2 . Creating a Address list

Where users with Custom attribute 1 with value ORGA will be showing up in their Address list

New-AddressList -Name "ORGA-AL" -RecipientFilter {((RecipientType -eq 'UserMailbox') -or (RecipientType -eq "MailUniversalDistributionGroup") -or (RecipientType -eq "DynamicDistributionGroup")) -and (CustomAttribute1 -eq "ORGA")}

3. Creating a Rooms list

Where users with Custom attribute 1 with value ORGA will be showing up in their Rooms list

New-AddressList -Name ORGA-Rooms -RecipientFilter {(Alias -ne $null) -and (CustomAttribute1 -eq "ORGA")-and (RecipientDisplayType -eq 'ConferenceRoomMailbox') -or (RecipientDisplayType -eq 'SyncedConferenceRoomMailbox')}

4. Creating Offline Address book

Assign the Global Address list created for OrganizationA for the Org A offline address book

New-OfflineAddressBook -Name "ORGA-OAB" -AddressLists "ORGA-GAL"

Created Offline address book Successfully

Lets create an Address book Policy to Get them linked under one umbrella.

Now Going to Create an Address book Policy for Organization A users

New-AddressBookPolicy -Name "OrgA-ABP" -AddressLists "\ORGA-AL" -OfflineAddressBook "\ORGA-OAB" -GlobalAddressList "\ORGA-GAL" -RoomList "\ORGA-Rooms"

Created an Address book policy successfully !!

Now we will Learn how to Apply Custom attributes for Users and other Active Directory objects

Open Exchange Administration Center (EAC) – Recipients – Properties of User Mailbox – Click on more options.

You can have the Custom Attribute 1 Value Set for One User for Testing Purposes

Or

To Apply for One user using Exchange Management Shell :

You can run in Exchange Management Shell

Get-mailbox "User1" | Set-mailbox –customattribute1 "ORGA"

To apply for all the mailboxes :

Get-mailbox | Set-mailbox –customattribute1 "ORGA"

To apply for the Users in a Specific Database :

Get-mailbox –database "Database Name" | Set-mailbox –customattribute1 "ORGA"

To Apply for one Distribution group :

Get-DistributionGroup "Group1" | Set-Distributiongroup –customattribute1 "ORGA"

To Apply for one Dynamic Distribution Group :

Get-DynamicDistributionGroup "Group1" | Set-Distributiongroup –customattribute1 "ORGA"

Now to View and Understand Better – Click on More options (***) – Add/Remove Columns

Choose Custom Attributes 1 and 2 which you want to view in Recipient Configuration

Now you can see the values assigned on the Users

Now we can Apply Address book Policy for a Specific User

Exchange Admin Center (EAC) – Recipients – Mailboxes – Properties of User Mailbox – Mailbox features – Address Book Policy

Now Logging into OWA as User1-ORGA  am seeing ORGA users alone in the Global Address list

You can log into Outlook as user1-ORGA and test the same.

Now Coming into the topic of assigning Email Addresses for the virtual organizations mailboxes,If you are planning to Give Different Domain Names for this Organizations

Custom attributes will make things Simple for us, as we can use the same filter for applying the email address polices as well.

First we will Create a Accepted Domain for ORGA –

EAC – Mail flow – Accepted Domains

Enter Name and Accepted domain and Click on Save.

Now will create a Email Address Policy where it will Stamp only for ORGA users

\

Enter policy Name and Click on “+” below Email Address format.

Choose the Accepted domain we just created. Click save.

Click on add rule and specify the custom attribute value1 ORGA. You can preview before saving as well.

Now you can see that  OrgA users are Stamped with ORGA.com

Great !!

Now ORGA is Ready

Lets make the ORGB ready – Its just the same thing but am going to use CustomAttribute2 as ORGB and going to use Commands as you are familiar now

As We know already we need to Create 4 things for an Organization to Implement Address Book Policies

1. Global Address list

2. Address list

3. Rooms list

4. Offline Address book

1. Creating a Global Address list

Need Exchange Management Shell to create Global Address list,

Where users with Custom attribute 2 with value ORGB will be showing up in their Address list,

New-GlobalAddressList -Name "ORGB-GAL" -RecipientFilter {(CustomAttribute2 -eq "ORGB")}

2 . Creating a Address list

Where users with Custom attribute 1 with value ORGA will be showing up in their Address list

New-AddressList -Name "ORGB-AL" -RecipientFilter {((RecipientType -eq 'UserMailbox') -or (RecipientType -eq "MailUniversalDistributionGroup") -or (RecipientType -eq "DynamicDistributionGroup")) -and (CustomAttribute2 -eq "ORGB")}

3. Creating a Rooms list

Where users with Custom attribute 1 with value ORGA will be showing up in their Rooms list

New-AddressList -Name ORGB-Rooms -RecipientFilter {(Alias -ne $null) -and (CustomAttribute2 -eq "ORGB")-and (RecipientDisplayType -eq 'ConferenceRoomMailbox') -or (RecipientDisplayType -eq 'SyncedConferenceRoomMailbox')}

4. Creating Offline Address book

Assign the Global Address list created for OrganizationB for the Org B offline address book

New-OfflineAddressBook -Name "ORGB-OAB" -AddressLists "ORGB-GAL"

Lets create an Address book Policy to Get them linked under one umbrella.

Now Going to Create an Address book Policy for Organization A users

New-AddressBookPolicy -Name "OrgB-ABP" -AddressLists "\ORGB-AL" -OfflineAddressBook "\ORGB-OAB" -GlobalAddressList "\ORGB-GAL" -RoomList "\ORGB-Rooms"

To apply in Bulk for all the Users in a Database –

Get-mailbox –Database "ORGB-Database" | set-mailbox –addressbookpolicy ORGB-ABP

Now Logging into OWA as User3-ORGB we can see only ORGB users alone in the Global Address list

You can log into Outlook as Test1-ORGB and test the same for Offline address book.

New-AcceptedDomain –name "ORGB.com" –DomainName "ORGB.com" –DomainType "Authoritative"

Now Creating an Email Address Policy for ORGB as similar we did for ORGB

And apply the email address policy.

Now Both the Organizations are Ready to use. And They have been Segregated with Different GlobalAddresslists

Will Get Back with More Scenarios !!

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How to Implement Address Book Policies in Office 365/Exchange 2013/2016 Effectively – Part 2

How to Implement Address Book Policies in Office 365/Exchange 2013/2016 Effectively – Part 3