Manage OOF Out-Of-Office through the Exchange Control Panel in Exchange 2010

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Anyone who has been in the Exchange field for a while should have come across this kind of a request at least once; a staff goes on holidays without setting an out-of-office message and calls the IT department to set one for him/her.

With 2010 and the new Exchange Control Panel (ECP), this request can be easily handled.

The ECP is primarily targeted to be used by

End users: Personnel granted the authority to self-manage aspects of their accounts such as the ability to track messages they have sent and received, create and manage distribution lists, or edit aspects of their personal account information.

Hosted tenants: Tenant administrators for hosted customers.

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Specialists: Personnel such as Help Desk operators, Department Administrators, and eDiscovery Administrators who have had the appropriate level of access delegated by administrators.

The ECP can be accessed through Outlook Web Access 2010 by logging into OWA and selecting the Options link. It can also be accessed directly via a URL which, by default, is located at:

https://CASServerName/ecp

The Exchange Control Panel (ECP) is a web-based management console that can be accessed from web browsers that have no Exchange specific client-side software installed. It can be accessed from the same Internet browsers that are support the Outlook Web Access premium client: Internet Explorer 7+, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari 3+.

This AJAX-based application is built into the Client Access Server role in an Exchange environment and, although it shares some code with OWA, it is a separate application.

It is important to note the Exchange Control Panel is RBAC-aware, meaning that administrative options are available only to those who have the appropriate permissions to utilize them.  ECP can show a user logged in with full administrative access several administrative tasks (note the Select What to Manage option in the top-left corner and the Manage your Organization option in the bottom-right corner) which shows the same interface as viewed by a standard user.

The Procedure

• Login to the ECP as an administrator. Click Options.
• Select “Another User” from the drop down window on the top left hand side. Allow pop-ups for this site in IE (Internet Explorer).
• Select the user for which you want to set OOF.
• Another window will open up. You will see a warning that “Administrator is working on behalf of the user”.
• Click on “Tell people you are on vacation” link on the right hand side or navigate to Organize Email –> Automatic Replies.

• Type in the OOF message and click Save.
• Close the window, return to the administrator ECP section and log off.

The benefit in this method is that the admin account doesn’t have to be given explicit rights on the user’s mailbox. No messing around with ACLs. The same can be done using Exchange Shell as well.