2003 AD+Exchange - Renaming mail-enabled security groups?

8 May 2009 7:04 AM

Barkley Bees

We are planning to rename roughly ~100 or so existing "mail-enabled
universal security groups" in our 2003 AD+Exchange environment. I would like
to know what the best practice would be for this process.

The current idea is to do as follows:

From ADUC on Exchange 2003:
- Rename "Group name" field.
- Rename "Group name (pre-Windows 2000)" field.

General Tab:
- Rename the "E-mail" field.

Exchange General tab:
- Rename the "Alias" field.
- Rename the "Display Name" field.

E-mail Address tab:
- Edit existing SMTP Address to match
(or would it be best to create a new one with the new name and set it as
primary? This way the old one would also remain.)
- Edit existing X400 Address to match
(same as above, ok to rename or best to add a new one?)

From ESM on Exchange 2003:
- Recipient Update Services - Update Now
(Rebuild perhaps during out of buiness hours?)
- Offline Address Lists _ Rebuild manually or simply let it run the default
5:00 update.

Our Outlook 2003 clients should have their OAB's updated ~24-48 hours later.
When Outlook2003 clients (cached/uncached) have their OAB updated, will
cached autocomplete in the To, cc and bcc fields also be updated or will
that require a separate operation at the client side?

Appreciate any advice and/or tips on this. Thank you.

8 May 2009 6:53 PM

Mel K.

BB:

You should test out a few groups to see the actual behavior, but you should
know that Exchange 2003 uses the legacyExchangeDN address to send INTERNAL
e-mails, so changing any of the attributes you mentioned will have no effect
on INTERNAL e-mails. It looks like autocomplete also uses legacyExchangeDN.

Versions of Exchange 2003/Outlook 2003 and earlier (and possibly later
versions too) use the distinguished name for internal e-mails. The
distinguished name is the "legacyExchangeDN" attribute and is in this
format: /o=OrganizationName/ou=First Administrative
Group/cn=Recipients/cn=JSmith

Note that this is NOT the same as the "distinguishedName" attribute which is
in the LDAP format CN=Smith\, John,OU=Users,OU=New York,DC=domain,DC=local.
See http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2004/07/21/189966.aspx and
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313324 to get some additioanl info about
legacyExchangeDN.

If this all works as I suspect that it does, there should be no issues with
the OAB or autocomplete because you're not changing the legacyExchangeDN of
any of the groups.

This is a topic that I don't see too much written about, but I was fortunate
to have worked in a very large corporation a few years ago and they had very
talented Exchange folks who knew all this stuff.

--
Regards,

Mel K.
MCSA: M

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"Barkley Bees" <barkb***@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:u5kyAt6zJHA.1424@TK2MSFTNGP02.phx.gbl...
> We are planning to rename roughly ~100 or so existing "mail-enabled
> universal security groups" in our 2003 AD+Exchange environment. I would
> like to know what the best practice would be for this process.
>
> The current idea is to do as follows:
>
> From ADUC on Exchange 2003:
> - Rename "Group name" field.
> - Rename "Group name (pre-Windows 2000)" field.
>
> General Tab:
> - Rename the "E-mail" field.
>
> Exchange General tab:
> - Rename the "Alias" field.
> - Rename the "Display Name" field.
>
> E-mail Address tab:
> - Edit existing SMTP Address to match
> (or would it be best to create a new one with the new name and set it as
> primary? This way the old one would also remain.)
> - Edit existing X400 Address to match
> (same as above, ok to rename or best to add a new one?)
>
>
> From ESM on Exchange 2003:
> - Recipient Update Services - Update Now
> (Rebuild perhaps during out of buiness hours?)
> - Offline Address Lists _ Rebuild manually or simply let it run the
> default 5:00 update.
>
> Our Outlook 2003 clients should have their OAB's updated ~24-48 hours
> later. When Outlook2003 clients (cached/uncached) have their OAB updated,
> will cached autocomplete in the To, cc and bcc fields also be updated or
> will that require a separate operation at the client side?
>
> Appreciate any advice and/or tips on this. Thank you.
>