FAQs

Exchange Reporter Plus gathers information about your Exchange organization from the following sources.

• Active Directory
• Exchange Servers
• Exchange Mailboxes and Public folders
• Message Tracking Logs of Exchange Servers
• Outlook Web Access Info Logs
• Event logs of Exchange Server and Domain Controller

After collecting data from the above sources, the data is stored in its intrinsic database, and then converted to meaningful reports and statistics along with necessary graphs and comparison charts.

Yes. On downloading and installing Exchange Reporter Plus, the product starts in trial mode. During the trial mode, data is gathered for reporting from the entire Exchange organization. After 60 days, the trial license expires; product stops to fetch data and switches to 'Free' edition mode where you can manage up to 25 Exchange mailboxes. However, the previously fetched data can be viewed and used.

No. The trial version is fully functional for a period of 60 days. Once the evaluation period expires, the product switches to ‘Free’ edition mode where you can manage up to 25 Exchange mailboxes with 'Standard' edition functionality.

Yes, you are entitled to receive free 24x5 technical support during the evaluation period. The support team can be contacted at support@exchangereporterplus.com or at the toll free number +1 888 720 9500.

When you buy Exchange Reporter Plus, your license will be based on number of mailboxes you want to manage in your organization. If you require data to be collected from specific mailboxes present across the Exchange servers, you can selectively manage those mailboxes using the manage/unmanage option in the product. Data is gathered for reporting only from the mailboxes that are managed.

Exchange Reporter Plus makes use of MAPI component to access the mailbox object properties. To access the MAPI component, the configured account must be a local system administrator account while running Exchange Reporter Plus as a service.

No, you don’t have to re install on buying Exchange Reporter Plus. After you purchase Exchange Reporter Plus, you will be provided with a license key. Provide the license file under the ‘License’ tab in the product and upgrade to the registered version of the product. All the data collected during your evaluation period will continue to exist.

After installing Exchange Reporter Plus, an Exchange organization should be added with details of the Global Catalog Server. The product should be provided with a privileged account that will be used to access various data sources to collect information on the Exchange organization.

Refer our Quick Configuration Guide to know the conditions to be satisfied.

Exchange Reporter Plus uses the credentials of a mailbox user to interact with all other Exchange mailboxes in the organization. Only if this user has an activated Exchange mailbox and privileges to access other users’ mailboxes, Exchange organization level data can be gathered.

The user credential that Exchange Reporter Plus uses must have administrator privileges like read/write access on all organization mailboxes to interact and read the mailbox properties of all activated Exchange users.

To upgrade to the latest build, follow the Service Pack Installation steps listed here.

The list of MAPI providers for various Exchange server environments are listed in the Quick Configuration Guide.

You can get access to the important points to consider under the ‘MAPI Configuration Note’ section in the Quick Configuration Guide.

MAPI can be installed from three different sources namely

• Exchange System Manager
• MAPI CDO
• Outlook 2003, 2007 and 2010

Exchange System Manager can be used only with Exchange Server 2003 environments. Hence it is not compatible in 2010 environments. The method used by MAPI to retrieve mailbox and public folder information fails in Exchange Server 2010 environment that has Outlook application installed. To work around this issue, Exchange Reporter Plus should be re installed in a new machine with MAPI CDO for 2010 environments.

Yes, Microsoft Outlook should be set as the default mail client when used as a MAPI provider.

Exchange Reporter Plus gathers data from various data sources and IIS servers are one among them. The IIS log files are parsed to collect Outlook Web Access (OWA) logon information which in turn is used for generating reports like Logon by Users, Browser based Logon. Hence IIS log path information should be configured properly to obtain OWA information.

The csCookie field contains the session id information that uniquely identifies OWA user Logons. If this field is not enabled, then Exchange Reporter Plus will not be able to detect OWA logons, and as a result will not be able generate any of the OWA reports. Only after enabling this field, the OWA logon information can be captured.

Exchange Reporter Plus collects the log path information from Active Directory. Hence when a change is made in MS Exchange, the change is not reflected in Active Directory and Exchange Reporter Plus. This calls for a manual update to the log path under ‘Admin -> Log/Store Path’ setting.

The following are the fields that should be enabled while configuring OWA.

• time
• date
• cs-uri-stem
• cs-uri-query
• cs-username
• c-ip
• cs(User-Agent)
• cs(Cookies)
• sc-status

A message tracking log is a detailed log with information on all the messaging activity happening in an Exchange environment that has the Hub Transport server role, the Mailbox Server role or the Edge Transport server role installed. These logs provide information on the path of every message going through the Exchange system. These logs are the foundation for the Exchange reports and hence the need to configure MTL log path.

If the product is installed on the below mentioned platforms, then there is no requirement for Mailbox Permission Gathering task. This is because Remote Powershell is used for this task which is available in these environments by default.

• Windows 7
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2012

If the platform where the product is installed does not support Remote Powershell by default, then Exchange Management Shell is needed.

Exchange System Manager(ESM) is required in Exchange Server 2003 environments.

‘Default Domain Controller Policy’ and ‘Object level Auditing’ should be configured for accessing Mailbox Property Changes and Mailbox Permission Changes reports. Upon configuration, events related to mailbox permission and property changes will be recorded in the ′Security Log′ in ′Event Viewer′ . You can access the detailed Exchange Audit configuration video here.

When the product is installed within the Exchange forest, Domain Controller Policy is configured automatically using a Microsoft API. Outside the Exchange forest, this API cannot be used for automatic configuration and hence should be configured manually.

If the product is installed on the following platforms

• Windows 7
• Windows Vista
• Windows Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008 R2

and the Domain controller is Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2, then Exchange audit events are automatically updated to the logs and triggered to the product.

In other cases, the data should be fetched from the event logs. Scheduled data collection will happen every 2 hours which can be customized as needed.