Export and Import Content Filter Words or Phrases

In Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007, you can add custom words or phrases as good or bad words to modify the Spam Confidence Level (SCL) assigned to messages. Messages with a good word or phrase are assigned an SCL of 0 and bypass other antispam agents that fire after the Content Filtering agent. Messages with a bad word are assigned an SCL of 9, and any configured action (delete/reject/quarantine) is taken based on the Content Filtering configuration.


Figure 1: Adding a custom word or phrase to Content Filtering configuration

To add a good or bad phrase to the custom words list using the EMC:

1. Go to Organization Configuration | Hub Transport | Anti-spam tab
   
2. Select Content Filtering and click Properties in the action pane
   
3. In Content Filtering Properties, select the Custom Words tab
   
4. Add a word or phrase in the following fields as required:
   • Messages containing these words or phrases will not be blocked:To add a good word or phrase, type it in this field
     
   • Messages containing these words or phrases will be blocked, unless the message contains a word or phrase from the list above: To add a bad word or phrase, type it in this field.
   
   

To add a word or phrase using the shell, besides the actual word or phrase, you must also specify the influence:

Add-ContentFilterPhrase "bad word" -Influence Badword

You can get a list of words or phrases added to Exchange by using the Get-ContentFilterPhrase cmdlet:

Get-ContentFilterPhrase | Select phrase,influence

Exporting and Importing Custom Words and Phrases
On the Edge Transport server, configuration information is stored in the local instance of Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) on Windows Server 2003. In Windows Server 2008, ADAM is renamed to Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (ADLDS). Unlike Exchange Server configuration information stored in Active Directory, which is replicated to all domain controllers in the AD forest, Edge Transport configuration information stored in ADAM/ADLDS is not replicated to other Edge Transport servers.

You can configure an Edge Transport server using a cloned configuration. See Using Edge Transport Server Cloned Configuration.

You can also export only the content filter phrases from one Edge Transport and import it to another Edge Transport server. To export the phrases, use the Get-ContentFilterPhrase cmdlet:

Get-ContentFilterPhrase | Select Phrase,Influence | Export-CSV "C:\MyFolder\CFPhrases.txt"

To import the phrases on another Edge Transport server, use the Add-ContentFilterPhrase cmdlet:

Import-Csv "C:\MyFolder\CFPhrases.txt" | foreach {Add-ContentFilterPhrase -Phrase $_.phrase -Influence $_.influence}

View membership of a Dynamic Distribution Group

Dynamic Distribution Group is the Exchange Server 2007 term for Query-Based Distribution Groups supported by Active Directory (and therefore Exchange Server 2003/2000) in Windows Server 2003. Unlike normal security and distribution groups, which have their membership defined by manually adding users/recipients as members, the membership of a Dynamic Distribution Group is determined every time the group receives a message. The (SMTP) Transport's Categorizer component queries a Global Catalog for a list of recipients matching the LDAP filter defined in the group.

Windows Server 2003's ADUC console allows you to preview recipients returned by the filter, by going to the group's properties and clicking Preview. However, with recipient management moved to Exchange in Exchange 2007, this ability to preview is limited to groups created using Exchange's "pre-canned" filters. If you're using a custom recipient filter (Exchange 2007 uses OPATH filters), you can't preview the recipients returned using the console.



In a previous post titled "Adventures with OPATH: some annoyances if you're used to LDAP", I talked about previewing membership using the Saved Queries feature in ADUC (the Windows 2003 version).

Later I noticed the product documentation was updated to include a way to view which recipients get picked up by the recipient filter - this is easily accomplished from the shell, using the following commands:

$Group = Get-DynamicDistributionGroup -Identity "My Dynamic Group"

This stores the Dynamic Distribution Group in a variable called $Group. Now we can use the Get-Recipient command and filter the output using the recipient filter from the variable $Group

Get-Recipient -Filter $Group.RecipientFilter

Determine cluster configuration of mailbox server (CCR/SCC)

To determine whether a mailbox server is clustered or standalone, and if clustered - whether it's using Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) or Single Copy Cluster (SCC), use the following command:

Get-MailboxServer | select name,ClusteredStorageType

The possible values:
1. NonShared = CCR cluster
2. Shared = SCC cluster
3. Disabled = standalone / non-clustered mailbox server