Overview:
1.1. Audience
This guide is aimed at system administrators who need to configure the Outlook profile for their users, so that it functions after a mail migration to Office 365 (Exchange online) or to Exchange on premises.
1.2. Using this guide
This guide explains the functionalities and steps to follow to successfully configure Outlook profiles.
It uses the domain drypizza.com as an example for an Office 365 tenant. It also uses warmsushi.com as an example of a non-Office 365 system.
The screen dumps used in this guide reflect these business names to provide typical examples of data to enter into each field.
Whitepapers and guides covering Cloudiway’s other products, such as general mail migration, are available from the Cloudiway website (www.cloudiway.com).
2.1. General principles
The Mail Client Agent, previously known as Outlook Configurator, is a software utility that executes locally on the computer that has Outlook installed, to configure the Outlook profile.
It can configure profiles for Exchange or Office 365 (Exchange online). Supported versions of Outlook are 2016 and 2013 32bit and 64 bit.
What it does: it creates a new profile that points to the destination mailbox post migration. There are two possible ways of using it:
– Stand alone. You launch the program with specific parameters on a computer. It then immediately applies the given parameters and creates the new profile.
– Managed by the Cloudiway platform. The administrator remotely deploys the Mail Client Agent from the Cloudiway Platform. (Click Once must be enabled on the browser).
2.2. Details
The utility creates a profile for the provided email address, with the Cached Exchange Mode property activated, using an OST file for cached content.
2.3. Pre-requisites
– Microsoft Windows operating system
– .Net framework 4.5 or more
2.4. Supported Outlook versions
– Outlook 2013
– Outlook 2016
– 32 bit and 64 bit
3.1. Installation
– Download the package at http://apps.cloudiway.com/download/mailclientagent.zip
– Unzip the package – Open a Windows command prompt
– Navigate to the location where the package has been unzipped
– Run the command-line utility mailclientagent.exe with the parameters as described below
3.2. Operation
3.2.1. Parameters
Here is the list of parameters required by the program:
3.2.1.1. Outlook 2016
Outlook 2016 requires only these parameters to configure the Outlook profile: (it is using autodiscovery for discovering the servername).
– email user@company.com (email of profile to create)
– displayname “Firstname Lastname”
– isdefault (if omitted = false)
Example: MailClientAgent.exe -email chloe@drypizza.com -displayname “Chloe Page” -isdefault
Here is the output: Once the profile is created, the user is prompted for his password the first time he opens Outlook. Outlook then synchronizes content from the Exchange server to the local .ost file.
3.2.1.2. Outlook 2013
The creation of the profile for Outlook 2013 requires more information. It needs the ExchangeGuid for the mailbox, and the server url.
You can get the ExchangeGuid property value by using the PowerShell cmdlet Get-Mailbox:
Get-Mailbox chloe | fl, ExchangeGuid
Here is the list of parameters for configuring Outlook 2013:
-email user@company.com (email of profile to create)
-displayname “Firstname Lastname”
-exchangeguid “exchangeMailboxGuid”
-server ServerName (outlook.office365.com for Office365)
-isdefault (if omitted = false)
Example: MailClientAgent.exe -email chloe@drypizza.com -displayname “Chloe Page” -exchangeguid “323F79DA-6D3E-41BF-9FC1-C1A67A02B837” -server outlook.office365.com -isdefault
4.1. Description
The managed way of using the MailClientAgent program is different from the standalone usage described above.
The central point is the user list that is on the Cloudiway platform at https://apps.cloudiway.com under Mail Migration/Mail Client List. From this list the project administrator can perform and monitor all actions: Install, Audit and Configure.
4.2. Users list
The Mail Client User List is the list of all profiles that need to be configured for Outlook.
For each user in the user list these properties are defined:
The first step in setting up the Mail Client Agent feature is to create the list of users. There are two ways to add users to the list:
4.2.1. Option 1: CSV upload
If you have a CSV file of all your users, you can upload the file to Cloudiway. The file must have the following fields in the header row:
FirstName;LastName;SourceEmail;TargetEmail;BatchName
The platform does not check for duplicate entries, so be careful when you create your csv files.
The BatchName field can be left blank. If required, you can use this field to name different batches so they can be run in a certain order. A sample CSV file is available for download during the steps outlined below.
4.2.2. Option 2: Single user creation details
Many of our first-time customers create a single user for testing purposes. This provides a means of testing the features without affecting all users. Single users can also be created for migrations affecting just a few users.
4.3. Actions
From the user list, the project administrator can perform various actions:
4.3.1. Schedule agent installation
The first action that must be performed for a user is the installation of the agent on the local computer.
This is done with ClickOnce, a Microsoft technology. ClickOnce enables the user to install and run a Windows-based client application by clicking a link in a web page.
When the project administrator chooses the “Install” action for all users or a subset of users, then an email is sent out to the source email address of all selected users. Each email message contains a link the user must click to install the agent locally.
When an agent is locally installed, it connects to the platform to report it has installed. The status appears as “Installed” in the Mail Client users list. It is then listening to commands it gets from the platform.
When the agent is installed, then the project administrator can choose between 2 new actions: Audit and Configure.
To schedule the installation of the agent, go through the following steps:
4.3.1.1 Installation on the user’s computer
Here are the steps for the installation of the agent on the user’s computer:
The link brings the user to this page:
4.3.1.2 Uninstallation on the user’s computer
If you need to manually uninstall the Mail Client agent follow these steps:
4.3.2. Schedule computer Audit
The first step is to select users or a batch/batches in the Mail Client List.
You choose to schedule the audit of the remote computers by then hitting Audit in the Actions menu item in the bottom bar:
This action sends a command to the agent to perform an Audit of the computer it resides on. Audit collects several data:
a. Office version and bitness, as well as the install path on the hard drive.
b. System bitness, cpu speed, available disk space on each drive, installed RAM and available RAM.
c. List of installed browsers with bitness and version.
To view audit results simply click on the user in the Mail Client List.
4.3.3. Schedule Outlook profile configuration
Choosing Configure in the Actions menu item in the bottom bar sends a command to the agent to perform the creation of the Outlook profile.
The creation of the Outlook profile is the same as in the stand-alone command line version of the agent. It uses the user’s target email, as well as first name and last name for the profile’s display name.
Attention: There are two different cases: Outlook 2016 and Outlook 2013.
4.3.4. Important pre-requisite for Outlook 2013 profile configuration
We provide a feature that collects Exchange Guids for all target mailboxes in the Mail Client List. This is a mandatory step before Outlook 2013 profile configuration.
2 steps are required to launch the feature:
Here is the detail of each of these steps:
4.3.4.1. Create your Office 365 or Exchange target connector
If you already created a target connector for the mail Migration you can skip this step.
Otherwise go through these steps:
4.3.4.2. Launch the Global Action Client Agent Preprocessing
Once the target Office 365 or Exchange connector is created you can go ahead and launch the Global Action Client Agent Preprocessing. For this, go to Mail Migration; then Global Actions and hit the Client Agent Preprocessing button.
This process is fast. It uses Microsoft PowerShell. The necessary credentials are taken from the previously defined target connector and it gets the Exchange Guid for each target email in the Mail Client User List.
Here is the display once done:
Once the preprocessing is done for Outlook 2013 users, you can go back to the Mail Client User List and launch the Outlook profile creation for the users.
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Please visit the entire knowledge base here (where you can search for keywords or read through topics): https://kb.cloudiway.com/
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