Back-synchronized properties
When you change certain properties of a shadow account, Exchange Resource Forest Management changes those properties in both the shadow account and master account. These properties are referred to as back-synchronized properties. By default, the list of back-synchronized properties consists of a single property—mail (E-mail Address), and can be modified.
When a back-synchronized property of the shadow account has changed, Exchange Resource Forest Management replicates the change to the master account. The ability to replicate property changes from the shadow account to the master account is helpful in a situation where certain properties are administered on the shadow account rather than the master account.
Deprovision
The Deprovision process performs the deprovision operation on the shadow account once the master account is deprovisioned. This causes Active Roles to execute the deprovisioning policies that are in effect on the shadow account to deprovision the linked mailbox of the master account. Note that the mailbox deprovisioning policies must be applied to the container that holds shadow accounts rather than master accounts.
In Active Roles, you can undeprovision the deprovisioned master account. However, this may not undeprovision the shadow account (and, therefore, undeprovision the linked mailbox). For undeprovisioning master accounts to have an effect on shadow accounts, the container that holds deprovisioned master accounts must be in the scope of the Policy Object provided by Exchange Resource Forest Management.
AutoProvision of distribution list manager
Exchange publishes distribution lists as mail-enabled groups in Active Directory. Such groups are listed in the Global Address List (GAL) and can be administered using Microsoft Outlook. Thus, Outlook can be used to add or remove members from a distribution list provided that the Outlook user is allowed to update the membership list of the respective group in Active Directory.
With Active Roles, an administrator can delegate the membership management task on a group to the account that is designated as the manager of the group. This can be done by specifying the manager’s account on the Managed By page and then selecting the check box to allow the manager to update the membership list of the group. Both the group and the manager’s account must be in the same Active Directory forest.
In the Exchange resource forest topology, where mail-enabled groups are located in the forest other than the forest containing user accounts, delegating the membership management task in this way is not feasible. To address the problem, Exchange Resource Forest Management synchronizes the manager setting for a shadow account on a group in the Exchange forest with the respective master account in the accounts forest, causing Active Roles to give the necessary rights to the master account.
If a user account (master account) in an accounts forest is configured to have a mailbox in the Exchange forest, and thus has a shadow account in the Exchange forest, the Managed By page can be used to give the master account the right to manage the membership list of a group. When you specify the shadow account as the manager of the group and select the check box to allow the manager to update the membership list, Exchange Resource Forest Management causes Active Roles to change security settings on the group so that the master account is authorized to add or remove members from the group.
Hence, on the Managed By page, you need to specify the shadow account rather than the master account. This requires a tool that would enable you to identify the shadow account. Exchange Resource Forest Management customizes the Active Roles Web Interface by adding a new entry to identify the shadow account. You can tell the shadow account’s name and other properties from the Shadow Account tab on the Exchange Properties page for the master account.
Mailbox type conversion
You can use Active Roles to convert a linked mailbox to a user mailbox, and vice versa, by managing the mailbox in the Exchange forest.
For linked mailboxes in the Exchange forest, the Active Roles Web Interface provides a command allowing you to unlink the mailbox from the external user. The command converts the mailbox to the user mailbox type, and enables the user account associated with the mailbox in the Exchange forest. The external user can no longer access the mailbox.
Foe user mailboxes in the Exchange forest, the Web Interface provides a command allowing you to link the mailbox to an external user from an accounts forest. The domain of the external user account must be registered with Active Roles (managed domain). The command converts the mailbox to the linked mailbox type, with the mailbox user in the Exchange forest configured as the shadow account and the external user specified as the linked master account.
For step-by-step instructions, see Mailbox type conversion later in this document.
