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About the Book

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Some books claim to cover it all and cover it in depth, but they rarely succeed at both goals. This book is completely focused on PowerShell for Exchange Server 2019, and PowerShell is covered in depth! Interested? Read on! Not only is the book focused on a deep dive into PowerShell for Exchange Server 2019, but all content is also practical, focused on real-world scenarios and knowledge gained through experience.

Updates Throughout the Year

Changes are natural even in the world of on-premises servers, and Exchange Server 2019 is no different. The PowerShell that we use to manage it also changes over the course of weeks, months, and years. To help you deal with this, we update our book frequently with the latest topics, content, and PowerShell cmdlets. If new cmdlets are added, we will cover those changes as well, and if connected services change, we'll cover that as well.

Changes

The book is written and maintained by Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) who specialize in Exchange Server and PowerShell and cover the topics expertly. We watch Microsoft for changes in PowerShell (monitoring cmdlets available) to their Roadmap and Message Center, so you don't have to. We cover as many changes as we can in each update. As the book is always up to date, Exchange Online PowerShell is unlike any printed professional reference book you have used in the past.

Exchange Server is Microsoft’s flagship messaging product. This book is aimed at those who know some PowerShell or are looking for ways to make their scripts better as well as help you become more confident in managing Exchange Server with PowerShell.

What’s Covered

• Basic PowerShell
• Script building theory
• Practical application of PowerShell
• Real-world coding examples
• Public folders – still around and still relevant.
• Unified Messaging
• Security – RBAC and securing email.
• Best Practices for using PowerShell
• Hybrid Modern Auth – connect Exchange Server to Office 365 to remove another attack vector.
• Desired State Config (DSC) – enhance your configuration with automatic settings.
• Windows Server 2019/2022 Core – dive into making your attack surface smaller.
• IMAP and POP
• Windows Defender – add exceptions to avoid issues with Exchange.
• Deep dives in Exchange scripts – migration and management.
• Tips and Tricks
• … and there’s much more!

Chapters

Exchange Online PowerShell has the following Chapters in which we cover a range of subjects relating to PowerShell:

1. PowerShell Basics: Used as a launching platform for PowerShell, this Basics chapter introduces you to PowerShell topics to help new PowerShell users understand PowerShell in relation to Exchange Online. Coverage includes variables, arrays, hash tables, loops, and more. Examples are geared towards Exchange Online to help with relevancy.

2. Beyond the Basics: Continuing on your PowerShell journey, we now cover more advanced topics like formatting your output, understanding data handling, and other helpful tips for moving forward with PowerShell and Exchange Online.

3. Building Scripts: Now that we've covered the basics, this chapter is dedicated to building your own scripts for use in managing Exchange Online. It is truly focused on real-world examples and getting the most out of the power of PowerShell.

4. PowerShell Remoting: This is a simple topic that can be complicated by Microsoft's changes. We cover the various methods for connecting to the Exchange Server.

5. What's New: As things change, What's New is a sliding scale. We do our best to cover important topics in this chapter, some staying longer than others but always covering the constant change of Exchange Online PowerShell.

6. Server Configuration: On-premises servers need configuration to exit the gate, and Exchange Server 2019 also requires configuration. We cover certificate management, virtual directories, DAGs, and more. If it can be configured or maintained with PowerShell, we cover it.

7. Server Management: Maintenance is needed to keep things going after configuration. Within this chapter, we cover backups, services, DAG maintenance, and updates.

8. Mail Flow: Like users, without mail, why have Exchange Online? The Mail Flow chapter covers domains, connectors, Postmasters, reporting, and much, much more.

9. Mail Flow - Compliance: Flowing mail is great, but sometimes it needs to be monitored. This compliance chapter covers DLP, message encryption and DLP in concerns of email.

10. IMAP and Pop: Still in use today by some clients as well as applications, IMAP and POP are also covered in this book. Using PowerShell, we can truly maintain and configure these services for your Exchange organization.

11. Users: Without users, why have Exchange Online? We can also use PowerShell to manage a tenant's user base with coverage of OWA, quotas, out of office and more. Use this chapter as your way to explore what is possible in terms of user management.

12. Non-Users: With users there are also groups, distribution groups and more. PowerShell is also a great tool for managing these and items like Rooms, Room Lists, Microsoft 365 groups and so on.

13. Mobile Devices: Exchange mailbox users typically connect to their mailboxes with Outlook desktop, OWA and very certainly with Mobile Devices. We cover PowerShell and mobile device management solely within the Exchange Server PowerShell module in this chapter.

14. Migrations: Organizations often move from platform to platform on an occasional basis. With PowerShell, we can initiate, manage, and control entire migrations from Exchange and other platforms.

15. Hybrid: In conjunction with Exchange on-prem, some organizations are in a Hybrid state either migrating or just maintaining this state. PowerShell is also a viable tool for managing this state.

16. Reporting: PowerShell is great at gathering data and outputting large sets for consumption by management and administrators alike. In this chapter we cover how to use PowerShell to create relevant Exchange Online reports with PowerShell.

17. Public Folders: While Public Folders were supposed to go away, organizations have used them for work-related tasks. Since Public Folders refuse to die, we've dedicated an entire chapter to its management.

18. Security: Security and access management are important to any service provided by an enterprise. PowerShell can be used to manage Roles and RBAC in Exchange Server. Additionally, impersonation, auditing, and other controls are also covered.

19. Unified Messaging: Unified Messaging has been removed from Exchange Server 2019, so why cover it? Organizations still maintain Exchange 2016 UM servers for this purpose. For those organizations, this chapter covers all UM cmdlets in detail.

20. Troubleshooting: Things break. We get red in PowerShell. Sometimes we get yellow. What does it all mean? In our Troubleshooting chapter we cover how to troubleshoot issues that you may experience when using PowerShell in Exchange Online. Expert tips and techniques are covered.

21. Miscellaneous: Some topics just don't fit in the rest of the book, and miscellaneous or menagerie are good terms for this chapter. Some are dedicated to PowerShell-specific concepts, while others are focused on Exchange PowerShell scenarios.

22. Desired State Configuration: Controlling configurations are typically what administrators dream of doing and DSC is a great tool for this part of managing Exchange.

23. Built-In Scripts: Exchange Server has a ton of built-in scripts that are provided by Microsoft for particular scenarios. We cover these, what they are used for and focus on real-world advice when using them.

A. Best Practices: PowerShell has some hard and fast rules that we must observe; however, sometimes, we near guard rails to guide us to better results. Best Practices focuses on generally agreed-upon methodologies and techniques for PowerShell scripting.

B. Health Checks: After Exchange is configured and users go about their tasks, administrators need to maintain them and keep them healthy. We cover an array of testing with PowerShell cmdlets and scripts for this task.

Value

With over 800 pages written and maintained by experts, this book is of great value to IT Professionals. Any sort of training or consultants who would instead do the work for you would cover the cost of this book many times over.

Note: Exchange Online PowerShell is purchased as a subscription service.

About the Author

Damian Scoles

@PPowerShell

Damian Scoles has been a Microsoft MVP for the past eight years, specifically for Office Apps and Services and now Cloud and Datacenter Management. He is currently based out of the Chicago area and started out managing Exchange 5.5 and Windows NT. He has worked with Office 365 since BPOS and has experience with Azure AD, the Security and Compliance Center, and Exchange Online. Contributions to the community include helping on TechNet forums, creating PowerShell scripts that are located in the TechNet Gallery, writing detailed PowerShell / Office365 / Exchange blog articles (https://justaucguy.wordpress.com/), tweets (https://twitter.com/PPowerShell) and creating PowerShell videos on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UClxHtLF0c_VAkjw5rzsV1Vg).