Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Error with your new mobile phone partnership

By default Exchange 2010 SP1 limits the number of mobile devices each user can connect to Exchange to 10. This is done by a Throttling Policy but it is not limited just to ActiveSync [EAS].
A Throttling Policy allows administrators to limit the amount of resources each user can take to avoid possible performance issues. In regards with EAS, a policy can control 6 parameters:
EASMaxConcurrency
EASPercentTimeInAD
EASPercentTimeInCAS
EASPercentTimeInMailboxRPC
EASMaxDevices
EASMaxDeviceDeletesPerMonth

The one we are interested is EASMaxDevices which together with EASMaxConcurrency are the only ones set by default.

If the limit of 10 is reached, a user will receive the following message on the device he/she is trying to synchronize (in this case I changed the limit to 1 for testing):


To overcome this limitation, you can increase this limit using the Set-ThrottlingPolicy cmdlet. For example, to change it to 25, run the following cmdlet:
Set-ThrottlingPolicy <policy_name> –EASMaxDevices 50

If you don’t want to increase everyone’s limit, you can create a new Throttling Policy, increase its limit and assign it to the user(s) you want:
New-ThrottlingPolicy "Increased EAS" -EASMaxDevices 25
Set-Mailbox Nuno -ThrottlingPolicy "Increased EAS"

Alternatively you can delete any devices that you no longer need to sync with Exchange, if any. To achieve this, login to Outlook Web App, go to Options -> Phone -> Mobile Phones and delete any unused partnerships to reduce the number of devices associated with your account.

For more information: Set-ThrottlingPolicy

14 comments:

  1. I'm getting an issue where my exchange server is adding devices for no apparent reason any suggestions

    ReplyDelete
  2. You mean you see devices added to users' accounts that are not theirs? Can you get any useful information from Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics or/and Export-ActiveSyncLog cmdlets about those devices?

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi man, I have a problem where a user is getting this error:

    "You have 10 phone partnerships out of the maximum allowed 10 partnerships. After you reach the maximum, you can't create additional partnerships until you delete existing ones from your account. To do so, sign in to Outlook Web App, click Options > Phone > Mobile Phones, and delete any unused partnerships."

    He has already checked in OWA (me too) and there are only two devices listed there, with names "Windows Mail" and "WP". I also double checked from EMC via Manage Mobile Phone menu, and there are indeed only 2 devices listed, the same with what appears in his OWA. Finally, I also checked using Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics -Mailbox user.name and this shows me the same two devices.

    Any idea? I will appreciate your help!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi,

      Sorry for the long delay in replying to you...

      Have you fixed this problem?
      Instead of *Statistics, try running instead: Get-ActiveSyncDevice -Mailbox username and see how many devices you get.

      Also, don’t forget that Windows Mail uses ActiveSync, so each time a user adds the account to a Windows 8 system it will count as 1 device...
      I just don’t know if you will see different entries for each Windows Mail or just one... :-S

      Regards, Nuno

      Delete
  4. is there a way to suppress error message to user?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Have you tried creating a Transport Rule that looks for that specific message subject? Not sure if it will pick them up as these are system messages, but worth a try!
      Let me know how it goes please as I don't have a system I can test this at the moment...

      Regards, Nuno

      Delete
    2. No matter what I put in the powershell it is not recognized. Any ideas why that would be?

      Regards
      Noel

      Delete
    3. Hi Noel,

      What do you mean? You can't run the *-ThrottlingPolicy cmdlets?

      Regards, Nuno

      Delete
  5. Hi Nuno,

    I have the same problem as anonymous as the Paired devices are only 2 while it gives that the no of devices exceed 10 ,by running command et-ActiveSyncDevice -Mailbox , it gives many devices ,how can i clear these devices as it doesnt appear at the ECP ?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Nader,

      Have you tried using the Remove-ActiveSyncDevice cmdlet to remove those mobile devices that you see using the EMS?

      Delete
  6. Is there a way to customize this error message. We want to limit users to the number of devices they connect with and rather than having them go to OWA to correct we would like them to follow a different process. I cant seem to find a way to do that.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Anonymous,

      Unfortunately I am not aware of any way of customizing this e-mail as it is not a System Message...

      The only thing I can think of (not pretty) is to have a script looking for these e-mails and, when one is detected, follow up with a custom made e-mail to the same user...

      Sorry I couldn't be of further help...

      Regards, Nuno

      Delete
  7. No matter what I put in the power shell it is not recognized. Any ideas please?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Do you have the correct permissions to run that cmdlet? Does it tab-complete? Can you copy-paste the cmdlet you are running and the error?

      Delete