Exchange – Issues if system mailboxes are not correctly configured

Since Exchange 2003, Microsoft has introduced some specific mailboxes to manage some system operations.

With Exchange 2013, these mailboxes are becoming more important. For example, these mailboxes are used to operate mailbox moves or OAB generation.

Off course, this may happened that system mailboxes become misconfigured (for any reasons). To solve this, Microsoft has published a TechNet articles (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg588318.aspx) to recreate and reconfigure the mailboxes.

But, with the Exchange 2013 beta, this may not operate as expected.

If I’m writing this post, it’s because I ran into various problems related with the misconfiguration of system mailboxes.

As part of the issues I had:

  • Unable to do a local move mailboxes
  • Standard OWA Apps (tasks, appointments) missing
  • Unable to install OWA Apps at the organization level; user can install Apps from their mailbox
  • No new OAB generation (Default Offline Address Book (Ex2012))
  • any many others

So to solve these issues, I followed the TechNet article but for a unknown reason, system mailboxes were not correctly configured.

Thanks to the Exchange Beta Support team, here are the PowerShell commands to ensure system mailboxes are working fine:

  • Delete ALL discovery and system mailboxes currently existing within your environment with Exchange 2013
  • Run the setup.com /preparead command using the setup program from Exchange 2013 binaries; this will recreate ALL user objects needed for the system/discovery mailboxes
  • Then from an Exchange 2013 server, launch EMS (Exchange Management Shell) and run:
    • Enable-Mailbox -Arbitration -Identity "FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042"

      Enable-Mailbox -Arbitration -Identity "SystemMailbox{bb558c35-97f1-4cb9-8ff7-d53741dc928c}"

      Enable-Mailbox -Arbitration -Identity "SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}"

      Enable-Mailbox -Arbitration -Identity "Migration.8f3e7716-2011-43e4-96b1-aba62d229136"

      Enable-Mailbox -Discovery "DiscoverySearchMailbox {D919BA05-46A6-415f-80AD-7E09334BB852}"

      Set-Mailbox "Migration.8f3e7716-2011-43e4-96b1-aba62d229136" -Arbitration –Management:$true

      $(get-mailbox "SystemMailbox{bb558c35-97f1-4cb9-8ff7-d53741dc928c}" -Arbitration) | set-mailbox -Arbitration -OABGen:$true -GMGen:$true -UMGrammar:$true -ClientExtensions:$true

      $(get-mailbox "SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}" -Arbitration) | set-mailbox -Arbitration  -UMDataStorage:$true

  • Finally, to complete the re configuration, open ADSIEdit console, locate the SystemMailbox{bb558c35-97f1-4cb9-8ff7-d53741dc928c} user objet, and edit his properties:
    • Locate the msExchCapabilityIdentifiers attribute and add the following value 46 and 47

This is it. All your Exchange System mailboxes should now be configured as expected.

To ensure everything is fine, you can run the following command from Exchange 2013 EMS get-mailbox -Arbitration | fl name,persis*, for some system mailbox you may have different GUID

You should have the following as result:

Name : SystemMailbox{1f05a927-2090-497a-a8d1-13d1e6ec27cb}
PersistedCapabilities : {}

Name : SystemMailbox{e0dc1c29-89c3-4034-b678-e6c29d823ed9}
PersistedCapabilities : {OrganizationCapabilityUMDataStorage}

Name : FederatedEmail.4c1f4d8b-8179-4148-93bf-00a95fa1e042
PersistedCapabilities : {}

Name : SystemMailbox{bb558c35-97f1-4cb9-8ff7-d53741dc928c}
PersistedCapabilities : {OrganizationCapabilityUMGrammarReady,
OrganizationCapabilityMailRouting, OrganizationCapabilityClientExtensions, OrganizationCapabilityGMGen, OrganizationCapabilityOABGen, OrganizationCapabilityUMGrammar}

Name : Migration.8f3e7716-2011-43e4-96b1-aba62d229136
PersistedCapabilities : {OrganizationCapabilityManagement}

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