ActiveSync Power Administrator

The latest trend in IT is bring you own device (BYOD), where employees are allowed to either chose which device(s) the company provides, or allow employees to use their personal devices to connect to the corporate network and work off. The company I work for is anti-BYOD. We standardized on iPhones, which are purchased by the company and assigned to employees. I was tasked with ensuring only those company assigned iPhones could sync with Exchange. This is fairly easy to do in Exchange 2007/2010 as there is a CASMailbox property called “ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceIDs”. This property has a null value by default and when the value is null any device can form a partnership with that account. All the user needs to do is run the setup Wizard on the phone, enter their credentials, then the phone starts syncing with Exchange. You can limit which devices are allowed to sync with a mailbox by setting a list of device serial numbers in the ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceIDs property. When the property is not null, only the devices listed can form a partnership with that mailbox.

Microsoft has assumed that setting the value of ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceIDs isn’t something the majority of organization would want to do, so they have left it out of the EMC. If you want to set this value, you need to do it through powershell. I wanted my help desk staff to be able to modify this property but I didn’t want them to have to use powershell, so I decided to create a Windows form GUI for this function. I decided if I was going to create a GUI for this function, I might as well create a full blown ActiveSync administrator to take care of all admin task in one GUI. I also decided to add some reporting functionality to the GUI.

Overview

The script uses a Windows form to look up and set ActiveSync properties on an Exchange 2007/2010 mailbox. The first tab of the form is the user administrator. After an email address is entered, the form will retrieve the current ActiveSync settings on the mailbox. The administrator can then modify those settings. The second tab is a reporting function. There are four reports defined. I can add more on request if you have a specific report in mind. The results of the report are displayed on the form and can also be exported to a csv file.

Prerequisites

To run this script, you need to have the Exchange 2007 or Exchange 2010 management tools installed. You also need the free Quest cmdlets for Active Directory, which can be found here.

User Admin Tab

Email Address

Enter the primary email address on the mailbox you want to manage. As you type, the script will do a look up in AD and present suggestions. Once you have entered the email address, click the Lookup button.

ActiveSync Status

This will tell whether ActiveSync is enabled for this mailbox. You can enable/disable ActiveSync with the corresponding buttons.

ActiveSync Policy

This shows which ActiveSync policy is currently assigned to the mailbox. If you have defined ActiveSync policies, you can select which policy to apply from the drop-down. If you have not defined any policies, the “Default” policy will be assigned.

Allowed Devices

The Allowed Devices list shows any device serial numbers that have been allowed for this mailbox. If the list is empty, all devices are allowed to connect. You can remove devices by clicking the checkbox next to the device serial number and clicking the “Remove Selected” button.

Serial Number

You can add serial numbers to the Allowed Devices list by entering the serial number and clicking “Add”.

Sync History

This shows the device partnerships for devices that have synced with this mailbox, as well as the last time the device has synced.

Identity

You can issue a wipe command to a device, cancel a pending wipe, or remove the device partnership by selecting the device identity and clicking the corresponding button.

Reporting Tab

From the reporting tab, you can run various predefined reports on your ActiveSync users. There are currently four reports defined but I can add additional reports on request. The current reports are:

Users with ActiveSync enabled
Users with ActiveSync enabled and a null list of allowed devices
Users with ActiveSync disabled
Devices that haven’t synced in 30 days

Once the report has finished running, it will be displayed on the Reporting tab. You will then be presented with a button, which allows you to take action on all the users returned in the report. For example, you will be able to enable ActiveSync on all users returned after you run the “Users will Activesync disabled” report. You can also export the report to a csv file by clicking the “Export to File” button.

To run this script, download it from the link below and save it to your hard drive. Change the extension from txt to ps1. Open a powershell window and navigate to the directory where you saved the script. Type .\ActiveSyncAdmin.ps1 and hit enter.

DOWNLOAD SCRIPT (Change extension from doc to ps1)