Exchange Server 2016 features and updates – Part 1

 Oct 06, 2016

September 2016 brought us the release of Exchange Server 2016 Cumulative Update 3. There has been quite a lot of updates, feature upgrades and new features added etc., so I thought now would be a good time to bring everyone up to speed with what has been happening in Exchange Server 2016. So here we have Gordon’s quick synopsis of the important new things in Exchange Server 2016, starting with the RTM release way back in October 2015 (from the viewpoint of the previous version of Exchange 2013). A following blog will then cover the main points from the 3 Cumulative Updates released up to the present time. These are just a summary and pretty much in bullet form, listing the main things I consider important in each update, but I have provided lots of links for further information.

Exchange Server 2016 RTM (released 1st October 2015)

Exchange Server 2016 RTM continues the 3-4 month regular Cumulative Update (CU) feature release model introduced in earlier releases of Exchange. Being a new iteration of Exchange, Exchange Server 2016 RTM contained a huge number of feature updates, new features and some features deprecated or removed. Here are my top items:

Architecture change – Exchange Server 2016 now has only 3 roles – Mailbox Server Role, Edge Transport Server Role and the Instant Messaging Server Role – and the last 2 are considered optional roles. Previous roles such as the Hub Transport Role and the Client Access Role are now incorporated into the one Mailbox Server Role, and Exchange Server 2016 now also allows you to proxy traffic from Exchange Server 2016 Client Access Servers. Further info can be found here: Exchange Server 2016 Architecture.

Outlook on the Web (formerly Outlook Web App) – has been greatly updated and optimised for tablets and smartphones, as well as desktop pc’s. Supports all recent versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari as well as Internet Explorer 11 and Microsoft Edge browsers. Platform support includes both IOS and Android 4.2 or later. Other new features include:

  • Search enhancements – an improved search functionality including search suggestions and context-aware filters that include date ranges, related senders etc.

  • LinkedIn – the ability to add contacts from their LinkedIn account.

  • Link Preview – enables users to paste links into their messages, with Outlook on the Web automatically generating a preview into the contents of the link, including video previews.

  • Pins and Flags – Pins allows you to keep your essential emails at the top of the inbox and are now folder specific, and Flags allows marking emails for later follow up. Inbox filters and the new Task module accessible from the App launcher, allows you to find and manage flagged items.

  • A new Action Pane includes existing items such as New, Reply All and Delete, and new actions such as Archive, Sweep and Undo.
  • Email improvements include a new single line view of the inbox, an optimised reading pane, archiving, emoji’s and the ability to undo mailbox actions such as delete and move.

  • Calendar improvements include a new look and features such as email reminders for calendar events, ability to propose a new time in meeting invitations, improved searching and birthday reminders.

  • In conjunction with SharePoint 2016, Outlook on the Web users can now link to, share, save and upload documents on OneDrive for Business instead of attaching files to their messages, allowing collaboration on those files in the same manner as Office 365. Users can also now view or edit Word, Excel or PowerPoint files in Outlook on the Web provided their organisation has a separate server running Office Online Server. See Install Office Online Server in an Exchange 2016 organisation.

  • And of course 13 new themes with graphics designs!

Further information can be found here: New features coming to Outlook on the web.

Outlook 2016 – MAPI over HTTP is now the default protocol for Outlook/Exchange communications, allowing a higher level of visibility to transport errors, enhanced recoverability and support for an explicit pause and resume function, enabling clients to change networks or resume from hibernation whilst maintaining the same server context. MAPI over HTTP is not enabled by default in organisations where you are installing Exchange Server 2016 servers into an existing organisation that already includes Exchange Server 2016 servers, or Where MAPI over HTTP wasn’t enabled in Exchange Server 2016. Clients that don’t support MAPI over HTTP will fall back to Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP). Further information can be found here: MAPI over HTTP in Exchange Server 2016.

Document Management – Again there has been many new and updated features associated with document management, messaging policies and compliance.

  • Data Loss Prevention templates can identify, monitor and protect more than 80 types of sensitive information with new conditions and actions that include mail flow rules that can match properties in attached Office documents, and allowing integration with SharePoint, Windows Server 2012 R2 File Classification Infrastructure (FCI) or a third party classification system. The new action Notify the recipient with a message can send notifications to recipients with the text you can specify, and the action Generate incident report and send it to allows group addresses as recipients. See Data loss prevention.

  • Public Folders are now integrated into the eDiscovery and Hold workflows, allowing you to search and place a hold on all Public Folder contents. Later releases are planned to allow you to specify the Public Folders to be searched and placed on hold. See Search and place a hold on public folders using In-Place eDiscovery.

  • Compliance Search is a new eDiscovery tool in Exchange Server 2016 that allows an unlimited number of mailboxes to be included in a single search and an unlimited number of concurrent searches. (The In-Place eDiscovery in Exchange Server 2016 still limits you to a maximum of 10,000 mailboxes in a single search, and only a maximum of two In-Place searches at a time.) Compliance searching is currently only supported in the Exchange Management Shell via a number of ComplianceSearch cmdlets, and you need to be a member of the Discovery Management Role Group or be assigned the Mailbox Search management role. See Messaging policy and compliance in Exchange 2016.

  • The search engine architecture has been redesigned and is now asynchronous and decentralised, able to distribute the work across multiple servers and keep retrying if any server is busy. This results in faster more reliable search results and improved scalability, upping the maximum number of mailboxes that can be searched at once in the console to 10,000 mailboxes (As above, you can search an unlimited number of mailboxes using the Exchange Management Shell.)

  • The Hybrid Configuration Wizard (HCW) from Exchange Server 2013 has been moved and is available as a cloud based application, allowing it to be updated quickly to support changes to the Office 365 service and includes improved troubleshooting and diagnostic capabilities to help you resolve issues when running the wizard. This wizard will now be used for both Exchange Server 2016 and Exchange Server 2016 hybrid deployments. AADConnect also now supports multiple forest environments, and can optionally integrate with Active Directory Federation Services (AD FS) to provide features such as Domain Join Single Sign On (SSO), enforcenment of AD sign in policy and support for smart cards and 3rd part Multi-Factor Authentication, and health monitoring capabilities via the Azure portal. See Integrating your on-premises identities with Azure Active Directory.

Stay tuned for my follow up Blog on the 3 Cumulative Updates (CU’s) so far to bring you totally up to date.

In the meantime, take a look at our Exchange Server 2016 training courses.

About the Author:

Gordon Cowser  

With over 22 years real world and training experience, Gordon is our most senior IT Infrastructure trainer. His expertise includes but is not limited to; Microsoft Server and Client OS, Messaging, Collaboration, Active Directory and Network Infrastructure. Gordon also specialises in SharePoint technologies training in both technical and end user aspects. With his extensive skill-set he brings a thorough mentoring capability to the classroom where he can advise on technical issues and challenges often beyond the scope of the course curriculum. A very approachable and experienced training professional, he has the ability to establish credibility fast with students at all levels.

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