Archive Mailboxes to .PST 's.

• Archive terminated employees mailboxes on-demand
• Archive system account mailboxes on a regular schedule

We have a number of compliance obligations at the grind.  We need to retain any contact information and customer correspondence that a former employee maintains in their e-mail. We also have service account mailboxes that collect notifications and grow large over time.

In both cases it's beneficial for us to siphon off the contents of the mailboxes to a flat file (.pst) - either on-demand or using a Scheduled Task.

I've compiled a few scripts that work both to be called from a web application and as a Scheduled Task.  The web application performs on-demand archival while the Scheduled Task dutifully siphons out the contents of those large service account mailboxes on a predictable schedule.

One disclaimer:  I've found the on-demand application of these scripts to be hit-and-miss.  So I use the on-demand web application to simply schedule a task that calls the mailbox archival scripts at a point in the not-so-distant-future.  This has proven to be way more reliable.

We'll start things off with a .bat file.  This script gets the current time, so you're sure that the .pst file you're generating has a unique name.  This ensures if you re-run the script you're not overwriting the contents of any existing .pst files. You'll call the PowerShell script with two arguments: 1. The name of the mailbox *alias* 2. The UNC path and file name (complete with .pst extension) of the .pst file you want to create. Example: You'd call this .bat like so: mailboxarchive.bat ryanb \\ryanboyer.net\archivedfiles\ryanb\

@Echo Off : : Called by .asp with the name of the mailbox and the path to the .pst file : : Prerequisites: : You'll need a c:\scripts\ directory with: : your exshell.psc1 ConsoleFile : your *shudder* PowerShell :FINDCLOCKTIME SETLOCAL for /f "tokens=1,2,3 delims=:." %%l in ('@echo %time%') do set NOWCLOCK=%%l%%m%%n for /f "tokens=2,3,4 delims=/ " %%i in ('@echo %date%') do set NOWTIME=%%i%%j%%k_%NOWCLOCK% powershell.exe -PSConsoleFile c:\scripts\exshell.psc1 -command c:\!ua\mailboxarchive.ps1 %1 %2%NOWTIME%.pst Endlocal

Here's the contents of the consolefile, exshell.psc1 (nothing earth-shattering here): <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <PSConsoleFile ConsoleSchemaVersion="1.0"> <PSVersion>1.0</PSVersion> <PSSnapIns> <PSSnapIn Name="Microsoft.Exchange.Management.PowerShell.Admin" /> </PSSnapIns> </PSConsoleFile>

Here's a script to *archive* the mailbox. Note that:

1. The mailbox will remain enabled.

2. The "ServiceAccount" is a domain account that exists and that has full rights to the mailbox:

3. You're calling this script with the name of the mailbox *alias*

# If the .pst file already exists the contents of the mailbox will be merged into it. $username = $args[0] $pstpath = $args[1] add-mailboxpermission -identity $username -user ServiceAccount -AccessRights FullAccess Export-Mailbox -Identity $username -PSTFolderPath $pstpath -DeleteContent -Confirm:$false -BadItemLimit:999 -ErrorAction:Continue

Here's a script to *archive and disable* the mailbox. Same rules regarding parameters apply:

# If the .pst file already exists the contents of the mailbox will be merged into it. $username = $args[0] $pstpath = $args[1] add-mailboxpermission -identity $username -user ServiceAccount -AccessRights FullAccess :disable-mailbox -Id $username -Confirm:$false

If you decide to call this script from a web application that your team uses for on-demand termination of employee accounts. Here's what I use for creating a Scheduled Task. It's in C, so just throw it in your favorite compiler: #include <stdio.h> // argv[1] sUniqueTaskName <-- Ensures Scheduled Task has a unique name // argv[2] sUserAccountName <-- the domain name of the account whose mailbox you're archiving // argv[3] FutureTime <-- A timestamp in the near future int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { char firststring[100]= "SCHTASKS /CREATE /RU ServiceAccount@RyanBoyer.neta /RP password /SC ONCE /TN "; char secondstring[200]= " /ST "; char thirdstring[300]= ":00 /TR \"C:\\Scripts\\MailboxArchive.bat "; char fourthstring[400] = " \\\\FileServer\\RepositoryForArchivedMailboxes\\"; char fifthstring[500] = "\\ \""; char fullstring[600]=""; strcat(firststring, argv[1]); strcat(secondstring, argv[3]); strcat(thirdstring, argv[2]); strcat(fourthstring, argv[2]); strcat(fifthstring, argv[2]); strcat(fullstring, firststring); strcat(fullstring, secondstring); strcat(fullstring, thirdstring); strcat(fullstring, fourthstring); strcat(fullstring, fifthstring); system(fullstring); return 0; }