Managed Default Folder and Configure Retention in Exchange 2010

Sometimes, being an Exchange Administrator, you might received the request or complaints from your users telling that their Junk or RSS Feeds or even Sync Issues folder in their Outlook is occupying a lot of space. And therefore, user will continue asking is there anyway to control it.

To configure this, there will be differences between Exchange 2007 and Exchange 2010 whereby Exchange 2007 is allow to configure via Exchange Management Console (EMC) or Exchange PowerShell while Exchange 2010 is only allow via Exchange PowerShell only. And therefore, it's time to start brushing the skill over in PowerShell. :(

In Exchange 2007, from the EMC,
1. Create the Managed Content Setting.

2. Configure the Retention and Action as you wish. Below are the examples for RSS Feeds folder and Junk Email folder. Both have been configured with 1 day retention and proceed for deletion but allow recovery after the retention.

 

3. Create the Managed Folder Mailbox Policy after configured the content settings.

 4. Bind / associate the default folder for with the policy. In my example, I associated both Junk Email and RSS Feeds folders

5. Last, to assign the policy to users, just need to launch the properties page of the users from EMC -> Recipients Configuration -> Mailbox -> Choose your user -> Properties -> Mailbox Settings -> Messaging Records Management.

6. Tick the column "Managed folder mailbox policy" and browse to the policy configured on step 3.

 

7. Done.

For Exchange 2010, basically perform the same steps but is via Exchange PowerShell.

1. To create the managed content setting for the default managed folder. In this example, I create a new managed content setting named “SyncIssuesFolder-Retention1Day”
 ->  New-ManagedContentSettings -FolderName 'Sync Issues' -MessageClass SyncIssues -Name SyncIssuesFolder-Retention1Day -RetentionEnabled $true -RetentionAction DeleteAndAllowRecovery -AgeLimitForRetention "1"

2. To create the managed folder mailbox policy. In this example, I create a new policy named “SyncIssuesFolder-Retention1Day-Policy”
 -> New-ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy -Name "SyncIssuesFolder-Retention1Day-Policy" -ManagedFolderLinks 'Sync Issues'

3. Apply the managed folder mailbox policy to the users. In this case, I apply to user called “exchadmin”
 -> Set-Mailbox -Identity exchadmin -ManagedFolderMailboxPolicy "SyncIssuesFolder-Retention1Day-Policy"

4. Done.

One thing to take note on the licensing part which is managed custom folders are a premium feature of MRM, and each mailbox that has managed custom folders requires an Exchange Server Enterprise CAL. More information about licensing can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb310756(v=exchg.80).aspx.

Thanks and hope the above steps will helps some administrators that looking at this area.