PowerShell New-MailContactCreate Exchange 2010 Contacts

Use PowerShell to Create Exchange 2010 Contacts

Before we create a Contact object at the PowerShell command line, I would like to begin by creating a contact manually.  There are two good reasons for this walk-through:

1. To be clear which object we are discussing.
2. To give us pointers for scripting, such as Alias cannot have spaces so we use an underscore in place.

PowerShell New-Mailcontact

Now we are ready to create an Exchange mail contact from the command line.  The key PowerShell verb is ‘new’ as in New-Mailcontact; here are the properties we are going to script:

OrganizationalUnit:
ExternalEmailAddress:
Name:
Alias:

 Once we have created the Mail Contact here are more PowerShell commands to configure the Contact:

Get-Mailcontact (Only contacts that are enabled)
Get-Contact  (All contacts including those disabled)

Get-Mailcontact

If you created a Mail Contact manually, then Get-mailcontact should display the name, both objects.
Get-mailcontact | Format-Table name, alias, ExternalEmailAddress -autosize.

Note 1:  In PowerShell nouns are singular.

Note 2:  ExternalEmailAddress

Enable-Mailcontact

Once you have created an Exchange 2010 contact via command line, you need to enable it. For this you need values not only for -Identity, but also for ExternalEmailAddress.  The value for the ExternalEmailAddress can be any of these:

• ADObjectID
• GUID
• Contact alias
• Distinguished name (DN)
• Domain\SamAccountName
• LegacyExchangeDN
• E-mail address
• User principal name (UPN)

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Disable-Mailcontact

In order to disable a mailcontact you need its Alias or DN. For example
Disable-Mailcontact Billy Cato

Note disable is different from delete.  If you wished to delete a mailcontact then the command is:

Remove-Mailcontact Billy Cato

See more on PowerShell Contacts for Exchange 2010.

More PowerShell Exchange 2010 Commands

The purpose of this simple illustration is to list all the roles of an Exchange Server.  Observe the simplicity of PowerShell’s two-part instruction, the verb ‘Get’ coupled to the noun ‘ExchangeServer’.

Note 3:  You could append -status to the above command.

Another Simple PowerShell Command

Note 4:  You can also try the format domain\user instead of YourPerson.

Research PowerShell’s Exchange Cmdlets

Use PowerShell’s own Get-Command to extend your knowledge of Exchange 2010 contacts to list all cmdlets containing ‘Exchange’.

Note 5: Actually, *Exchange* doesn’t unearth many cmdlets, thus you could substitute *Mail* or *Address* in the above example.

Discover Parameters for Your Exchange 2010 Command

Once you find a particular cmdlet that interests you, the next step is to see if it has any useful parameters.  Again use PowerShell’s own Get-Help cmdlet.

Note 6: I always append -full because I like to see Microsoft’s PowerShell examples.  Incidentally, this is how I knew there was a parameter called -status.

See more simple PowerShell examples for Exchange Server.

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PowerShell Exchange AddressList Cmdlets

I have included some of the many PowerShell Exchange 2010 cmdlets, here are the three nouns to investigate Exchange address lists.

• AddressList
• GlobalAddressList
• AddressListPaging

Combine with these PowerShell verbs: Get, Set, New and Remove, for example,

• New-AddressList
• Get-AddressListPaging
• Set-GlobalAddressList

PowerShell Exchange Mailbox Cmdlets

• StoreUsageStatistics
• MailboxDatabase
• StoreMailbox
• Database
• MailboxServer

As usual, always try the ‘Get’ verb, but if you know what you are doing then experiment with: Mount, Dismount, Clean or even Remove.

Mailbox Policy Cmdlets

You can also use PowerShell cmdlets to modify the various email policies, the key nouns are: InboxRule and EmailAddressPolicy.

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Monitoring Exchange 2010 High Availability

Here are PowerShell commands for clustered configurations.

Get-MailboxDatabaseCopyStatus

This PowerShell command displays the status of all your databases on all mailbox servers.

Check to see that the database is mounted and healthy.

Note 7: The -identity parameter is frequently used in conjunction with Exchange cmdlets.

Test-ReplicationHealth

Here is a PowerShell Cmdlet which checks that mailboxes in a cluster are replicating correctly.

Digression: More PowerShell Commands for Exchange 2010 Containing ‘Test’

Do you remember how to research for more cmdlets with Get-Command?  Well try:

Summary of Create Contacts with PowerShell’s New-Mailcontact

It’s easy to use PowerShell’s New-Mailcontact to create an Exchange 2010 mail contact from the command line.  I chose creating contacts as a vehicle for PowerShell because contacts are easier to manipulate than other Active Directory objects.

See more PowerShell Cmdlets for Exchange 2010:

• Exchange 2010 Home   • Get-ExchangeServer   • Set-ExchangeServer   • New-SystemMessage   • SP1

• Get-Mailbox   • Get-MailboxStatistics   • Connect-Mailbox   • Enable-Mailbox   • Disable-Mailbox

• PowerShell Exchange Cmdlets   • Set-Contact    • New-Mailcontact   • Add-MailboxPermission -identity