If you are an Exchange developer and haven't checked out Glen Scales's blog then you are missing out. Chances are he has written part of your project for you and posted it on his blog. Check out his latest post for a script which generates a report of mailbox size broken down by the age of messages...
I saw another case on this issue and remembered that I hadn't put this on my blog yet. If you are getting 403's when trying to create an appointment in another user's calendar using WebDAV or an access denied in CDOEX after installing our Send As hotfix (895949) then check out this article...
919169 You cannot save an appointment to another user's calendar by using CDOEX in Exchange Server 2003 after you apply hotfix 895949http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;919169
...You will have to open a support incident to get this hotfix....
Note from the article, "In special cases, charges that are ordinarily incurred for support calls may be canceled if a Microsoft Support Professional determines that a specific update will resolve your problem. The usual support costs will apply to additional support questions and issues that do not qualify for the specific update in question."
...In other words you should not be charged for this case if it is opened solely for the purpose of getting the hotfix, any additional troubleshooting or help may incur a cost...
Support Engineers, like myself, at Microsoft interact with online documentation as much as anybody else inside the company (except the content folks of course) and probably more than anybody outside of MS as well. On my team alone I support over a half a dozen products each having as many as a dozen APIs with thousands of pages of internal and external documentation. And we are adding new stuff all the time. With each release of Office, Vista, Visual Studio, and Exchange there are more fixes and updates as well as brand new stuff to learn. There is no way to keep this all in your head no matter how big it is or how long you have been on the team. So much of my day is devoted to scouring our public documentation to give to customers to explain product behavior, document a bug fix, show how to do something, or where to get something.
Having this experience day in and day out, I can definitely agree with the sentiment out there that our documentation, while as expansive as anybody else's, is not as good as it could be. That is why we were all so happy to see blogging take off at Microsoft and it has helped so many get their message out quickly and directly. But blogging is just what it is, one person or a small group of people who are talking to the community it is not a replacement for MSDN, TechNet, or support.microsoft.com. As opposed to blogs these sites, in my opinion, are supposed to be the impersonal, unbiased, fact driven resources for supportability, bug documentation, and product reference.
So how can we blend the power of the community that we see in blogging with MSDN? Check out these two ventures into the Wiki world from different teams at Microsoft: MSDNWiki which is a wiki site that replicates the Visual Studio and .NET Framework portions of MSDN in a wiki that can be updated by the community and ExchangeNinjas which is a wiki site devoted to Exchange 2007 which is moderated by the Exchange Team Blog folks.
I'm very interested to see what comes out of these two sites and very happy and anxious to contribute to their growth. Check them out and let us know what you think...
Updated 1/22/2009 – Removed some broken links.
We have an article published now which addresses my earlier post about the myths regarding SmtpServer.Insert...
922777 You receive an error message when you try to send an e-mail message by using the System.Web.Mail namespace in the .NET Framework 1.0http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;922777
VSTO 2005 SE is a free download for Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office AND Visual Studio 2005 Professional that will allow you to build VSTO AddIns for Office 2007 applications.
Note if you installed the CTP this summer...
"VSTO “v3” CTP users: If you previously installed any of the VSTO “v3” CTPs, you need to completely remove the CTP software from your computer before you install VSTO 2005 SE. Because the CTP’s ability to uninstall itself is very limited and unreliable, we strongly recommend that you restore your system in its entirety from a backup made before any VSTO “v3” CTP software was installed. This will require you to reinstall Visual Studio as well. If VSTO 2005 SE is installed on computers where VSTO “v3” CTP software is installed, or was installed but not removed properly, you may experience various error messages and failures. (If restoring a backup of your computer is not an option, you can try to uninstall Visual Studio 2005 and all related products from your computer, and then install them again. This is not guaranteed to completely remove the CTPs, but it has been reported to be sufficient to enable VSTO 2005 SE to work.) "
There are some new posts on Tech Net regarding Microsoft Exchange 2007...
Discontinued Features and De-Emphasized Functionality
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/e2k7help/79df6a3a-29a8-4935-b143-8a66c8d082d4.mspx?mfr=true
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998911.aspx
Here are the development features that are discontinued…
"
APIs and Development Features
Feature
Comments and mitigation
Transport event hooks
Retain a computer that is running Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 in the Exchange 2007 organization if you need this functionality.
Workflow Designer that was included with the Exchange 2003 SDK
Use Windows Workflow Services (WWS).
Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) for Workflow that was included with Exchange 2003.
Microsoft Collaboration Data Objects for Exchange Management (CDOEXM)
Exchange Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) classes
MAPI client and CDO 1.2.1 on the Exchange installation
Exchange 2007 no longer depends on these components. They are a separate component that will be available for download. For more information about how to download the required components, see MAPI client and CDO 1.1.2 and CDO, version 1.2.1.
Here are the development features that are de-emphasized…
“There are legacy Exchange features that are now being deemphasized in Exchange 2007:
•
Public folders - Free/busy calendaring functionality is provided by the Availability service. If you need additional functionality, migrate to SharePoint Portal Server or a similar product.
Proxy address generators - Use the Exchange Management Shell.
CDO 1.2.1 - This functionality is provided by the Exchange Web Services.
MAPI32 - This functionality is provided by the Exchange Web Services.
CDOEX (CDO 3.0) - This functionality is provided by the Exchange Web Services.
Exchange WebDAV extensions - This functionality is provided by the Exchange Web Services.
ExOLEDB - This functionality is provided by the Exchange Web Services.
Store events - This functionality is provided by the Notification Web service.
Streaming backup APIs.
Exchange 2003 Virus Scanning Application Programming Interface (VSAPI).”
Keep in mind that de-emphasized features will still be supported to work on or against Exchange 2007 but we will strongly discourage you from writing new solutions that use these APIs.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998811.aspx?wt.svl=overview
The new development technologies are those that you have problem already heard of, Exchange Web Services (use in place of MAPI, WebDAV, CDO 1.21, CDOEX, and Exchange Store Event Sinks), Transport Agents (use in place of SMTP Event Sinks and the Virus Scan API), Exchange Managed APIs (use in place of CDOSYS, MAPI, and CDOEX), and the Exchange Management Shell (use in place of CDOEXM).
Exchange 2007 SDK
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/exchanchor/htms/msexchsvr_e2k7_sdk.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb418726.aspx
Updated 1/22/2009 – Fixed some broken links.