iOS 6 issues with Exchange - Update

This is an update post of the iOS 6 issues with Exchange post from early October.

Looks like Apple has released an update for iOS 6 (available via iTunes and wirelessly) which supposedly fixes the issues of this OS with Microsoft Exchange meetings!

“This update contains improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Fixes a bug that prevents iPhone 5 from installing software updates wirelessly over the air;

• Fixes a bug where horizontal lines may be displayed across the keyboard;

• Fixes an issue that could cause camera flash to not go off;

• Improves reliability of iPhone 5 and iPod touch (5th generation) when connected to encrypted WPA2 Wi-Fi networks;

• Resolves an issue that prevents iPhone from using the cellular network in some instances;

• Consolidated the Use Cellular Data switch for iTunes Match;

• Fixes a Passcode Lock bug which sometimes allowed access to Passbook pass details from lock screen;

• Fixes a bug affecting Exchange meetings”

You can find details regarding this update here.

Wiped Mobile Devices Can Still Access Mailbox

When you wipe a mobile device that has a partnership with your Exchange environment, it might still be able to re-establish a connection and access the mailbox it had configured for 24 hours. This is the same as what happens with Outlook Web App and similar to when you disable an Active Directory account and the user can still use Outlook to access his/hers mailbox for up to 2 hours.

The solution to immediately prevent access to the mailbox after issuing a wipe is to:

1. Disable the mailbox;

2. Set a Send Prohibit Quota of 0KB;

3. Move the mailbox to another database.

If this is a mailbox in Office 365, then disable the protocols using the Set-CASMailbox cmdlet!

iOS 6 Issues with Exchange

There have been some reports that iOS 6 is not working properly for many Exchange users... Apparently there are two issues:

Push E-mail

Push delivery of e-mail does not work, meaning users have to manually check for e-mails. It seems that this issue is not carrier or device specific and rebooting or reconfiguring the Exchange accounts only “fixes” the issue temporarily.

Meetings

This second issue happens when users decline a meeting invitation from an iOS 6 device. Instead of simply sending a notification to the meeting organizer, iOS 6 sends meeting cancellation notices to the entire group of attendees, cancelling the invitation for everyone!

In the environment where I work, we don’t seem to be experiencing any of these issues. Initially I asked colleagues if they were having any problems with push e-mail and they were all working fine (I believe our ServiceDesk has not received any calls regarding this yet – we have 651 devices on iOS 6 so far).

As to the second issue, I tested it three times with different users and with the new iPad, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 and couldn’t replicate the issue...

However, this seems to be affecting many, many Exchange 2007/2010 organizations out there, so please be aware of this and test it!

UPDATE: The Exchange Team has just published a post on this: iOS6 devices erroneously take ownership of meetings!

UPDATE 2: looks like Apple has released an update for iOS 6 (available via iTunes and wirelessly) which supposedly fixes the issues of this OS with Microsoft Exchange meetings! More information here.

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

Mobile Device Management

As we all know, Exchange 2010 brought many, many welcomed new features.

With the latest version of Exchange ActiveSync [EAS] 14.1 released with Exchange 2010 SP1, came a few more such as GAL photos or Information Rights Management over EAS. A major one was the addition of device and user information to the provision command of mobile devices. This allows administrators to create Allow, Block and Quarantine lists (known as ABQ lists) in order to control which mobile devices are allowed to access Exchange mailboxes.

Although this functionality was present in the RTM version of Exchange 2010 with version 14 of EAS, SP1 adds a user interface in Exchange Control Panel [ECP] for easier management of ABQ lists.

We can, for example, quarantine all or just specific devices based on their model:

In this case, we created a Device Access Rule to block all Samsung Galaxy S II devices. When I then tried to connect my phone to Exchange, I got the following message:

Because this is a new device, Exchange sent the following e-mail to the administrator so he was aware of it:

To read more about this new functionality, explore it in-depth and see a few examples on how to configure everything, please check the following posts on MSExchange.org:

• Mobile Device Management (Part 1)
• Mobile Device Management (Part 2)

Hope you find it interesting!