Exclaimer Mail Utilities 2007
Near the beginning of 2006, while I was administering my own mail server, I discovered a great little utility called Exclaimer Mail Utilities. I call it a “little” utility because of the size – it was less than a 20-megabyte download – but that is where the appropriate use of the word ends. For one thing, to call it a utility is a misnomer; Exclaimer (http://www.exclaimer.com/) really provides a suite of tools that fills the space between where the Microsoft Exchange Server product ends and perfection lies.
When Rick Robertson, the president of Exclaimer called me in September and asked for a meeting, I was only too pleased to find that our busy travel schedules were to collide at an industry event in Redmond at the end of that month.
It turns out he wanted to engage my services to test out the company’s soon-to-be-released Exclaimer Mail Utilities 2007 and see how it compared to the native functionality of Exchange Server 2007. “Mitch, I want you to be as honest in this article as you were when we first met,” he said. “We believe that our product adds significant value to Exchange Server 2007, but if you disagree, then write that because we need to know.”
Exclaimer Mail Utilities 2007 is designed to complement Microsoft Exchange 2007 server environments. Because of the significant changes from Exchange 2003 it will not deploy on previous versions.
Mail Utilities 2007 basically comprises six distinct tools in one package:
· Disclaimers / Signatures / Branding
· Message Journaling
· Auto-Responding
· Message blocking and redirection
· Anti-Spam
· Anti-Virus
If you have ever received an e-mail from me you may have noticed that, whether for business or personal messages, I always use the same signature, which consists of my name and certifications, my MVP designation, a link to my blog and my U.S. cell phone number. I have my name in a different colour and size from the rest of it, but if you are looking for something more impressive, this is not the way to go. Three years ago, I spent some time designing a signature with colour, lines, and logos. I called it my brand and was very proud of the uniqueness of it, until I got an e-mail from someone with a remarkably similar signature. When I asked him about it he said, “Yeah, I liked yours so I took it.” That was the last day that I used that branding.
Exclaimer branding is not so easy to steal. It gives your organization the ability to create elaborate letterheads that truly brand your company – a complete letterhead so that the e-mail received does not look simply like a blank sheet of paper with a signature at the bottom. You can design the header with your logo, a side bar with company contact information and web links, and your signature and disclaimer at the bottom. Best of all, it is added to outgoing e-mail at the server level, so it will apply to messages generated on mobile devices and Outlook Web Access as well as those with an Outlook Client. If you are a minimalist who only wants your signature and disclaimer at the bottom of outgoing messages, then Exchange does that natively. If you want every e-mail sent from your organization to bear the true mark of your company, then Exclaimer may be a good tool for you.
We have all received e-mails that were replies to replies, or forwards of forwards, consisting of entire conversations. While Exchange will put your signature at the bottom of your reply, generally the disclaimer will sink to the bottom of the entire chain. Exclaimer gives you the ability to place that disclaimer at the end of the most recent message – or wherever you would like it to be. I found that to be a distinct advantage over Exchange.
Message Journaling has become an important feature for companies not only because e-mails are larger these days, but also for compliance reasons. One of the predominant concerns I continuously hear about is compliance, whatever the governing law may be (Sarbanes Oxley, DoD, HIPAA, and so on). Archiving is a big part of compliance because firms are required to retain e-mail just as they are required to retain any other business document. Exchange 2007 allows archiving of folders, but Exclaimer does it better. This tool is particularly useful for larger organizations using archiving solutions that involve a journal mailbox system. Most users would have to set the archiving feature to their PST file or have the IT department do it for them. Exclaimer takes this worry out of the user’s hands. This was a great feature that I fell in love with.
The Exclaimer Rule Engine is most interconnected with all other modules of Exclaimer Mail Utilities 2007. It is a powerful, interactive and intuitive GUI-driven module that allows companies to basically do anything with their e-mail, whether inbound or outbound. It is the heart of the anti-spam and anti-virus modules, but it is also a powerful utility that for many companies would be worth implementing.
It is easy enough to trick an inbound e-mail to go to a different box, or to intercept outbound e-mail natively in Exchange Server 2007. However, with the Exclaimer Rule Engine, you can really take control of every aspect of an e-mail. Although the possibilities are truly boundless, two examples that come to mind are the ability to detect e-mail from a particular individual or organization and change the Return Address field so that replies will be redirected, or change the e-mail to appear as if it came from someone else so an e-mail sent to you by me can appear to have come from an internal source, or whomever you like. For companies being purchased and renamed, it is simple to change the outbound Return Address field to the new company name, along with the e-mail branding and disclaimer. Imagine being a project manager of Project Hurf Durf, and knowing that any incoming or outgoing e-mail to your organization with the words “Hurf Durf” in the subject would be copied to you.
Auto-Responding is another feature controlled by the rules engine. Although Exchange 2007 has a decent auto-responder, it is managed from the desktop without much control and customization. Exclaimer’s feature set is richer and operates on the server, allowing inclusion of the original message and attachments to the auto-response, maintaining the integrity of the original message.
I was showing some of these features to a colleague the other day and asked for his opinion. “I can script those rules now if I want to,“ he said. Of course that is true, and any wizard coder could probably script any of these rules individually, but for those of us who are not as adept at scripting, and for the programmers who prefer an easy GUI to coding, the comprehensive Mail Rule GUI is easier and more available to most mail administrators.
The two modules that first got me interested in Exclaimer were anti-spam and anti-virus. Exclaimer Mail Utilities 2007 does a great job of both of these critical functionalities. However, so does Exchange 2007 with the Intelligent Message Filter and Forefront Security for Exchange. It does not hurt to have redundancy, but as Microsoft continues to do a better job of securing its infrastructure, it will be hard to beat them on functionality and pricing. However, the race for the best anti-malware engines is a constantly evolving one; if your organization is seeing increased levels of spam at a given time, try disabling IMF and giving Exclaimer a try.
With Exchange 2007 coupled with Forefront Security, there is little need for a third-party solution to provide anti-virus protection. However, in an organization that isn’t up to date with anti-virus, Exclaimer is a viable alternative for those looking for fulsome protection beyond their already-deployed anti-virus solutions. I was very pleased with the anti-virus features.
In the past few years, Microsoft has taken an 80/20 approach to developing their platforms, where they will deliver 80% of the functionality needed by the majority of users and leave the 20% gap for independent software vendors to fill. Exclaimer certainly does a commendable job in filling that gap for organizations that require the richer archiving, rules, branding and auto-responding features that are offered.
To be fair, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 has the ability to do all of these natively. My job was to see if Exclaimer did a better job of it, and if it would truly make the job of the mail administrator easier.
In short, I was pleased with the tools that were delivered. They did what they promised, did it all well and did not require any degree of training. I believe that Exchange Server 2007 is the best mail server that Microsoft has delivered to date and the added functionality that Exclaimer Mail Utilities 2007 offers makes it an even better experience for the administrator, as well as for the organization.
About Mitch Garvis
Mitch Garvis is a Senior IT Consultant and Trainer with InFront Consulting Group. He has been an infrastructure specialist in the IT field since 2000, and has worked in computers most of his life. Mitch’s unique combination of technical, communication, and people skills make him a highly effective and sought-after trainer and speaker. He has written several courses and collaborated on numerous exams for Microsoft Learning, and has toured both North America and internationally teaching for Microsoft.
Mitch holds several Microsoft certifications, and is the Chief Training Officer for Certguard.com. He has lectured across North America on the Microsoft certification program. He founded the Montreal IT Professionals Community, and has been recognized for his community contributions with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Award (MVP: Windows Server – Customer Experience.)
Mitch is a prolific blogger whose musings can be found on The World According to Mitch , where he discusses matters of interest to all – technical and otherwise. He can be reached by e-mail at mitch@mvps.org.