Exchange Web Services Editor

Using PowerShell, Exchange administrators can develop scripts to do almost everything. However, there are occasions where a script that uses Exchange Web Services (EWS) is required, may that be for an administrative task or to develop an entire application.

 

I have developed a few EWS scripts but I admit I am no expert on the subject. As such, sometimes I rely on a great tool that not many people are aware of, the EWS Editor. This tool has 3 main goals:

1.      "Demonstrate the Exchange Web Services Managed API functionality and simplicity to developers through its source code;

2.      Demonstrate the Exchange Web Services SOAP traffic used to perform actions initiated through an explorer user interface;

3.      Assist non-developers in debugging and understanding Exchange stores by exploring items, folders, and their properties in depth."

 

Each release of EWS Editor includes the distribution of the EWS Managed API it was built for. EWSEditor uses .NET Framework version 4.5 which can be downloaded here: .NET Framework 4.5. The latest version of EWS Editor (from May 2015) uses .EWS Managed API 2.2, which requires a minimal of .NET 3.5. EWS Editor can be downloaded from CodePlex.

 

EWS Editor is, in some ways, similar to MFCMapi, another great tool. It does not require installation and unlike MFCMapi it does not require Outlook profiles in order to access mailbox items as it does everything over EWS.

We can check mailbox items and their properties:

We can look into particular folders, its emails, attachments, properties (notice how all the property names are easy to read), etc.:

 

We can test and get information regarding AutoDiscover:

The tool comes with a multitude of EWS Posts examples that we can use to see how they are built or even post them against Exchange and analyze the response:

 

We can also check and/or set Out-Of-Office messages for users (assuming we have the right permissions to do so):

It even comes with a handy Distribution Group expansion tool that allows us to see exactly who is a member of a particular group:

Another great tool is the Debug Log Viewer where we can see all the EWS requests and responses for all the actions we do using this tool (in this case we can see the response from the Messaging group expansion above):

There are many, many other things we can use this tool for: