DST and Mobile Devices

We are now less than a week away from the start of the daylight saving time changes for 2007. As an Exchange admin are you ready? By now I am sure you have patched your computers and Exchange servers, read the DST documentation, viewed webcasts, and run the Exchange calendar update tool. With such a long list of things to worry about have you remembered all those pesky mobile devices? Below are a few links to patching instructions for different mobile device types:

• Windows Mobile (Important: After applying the patch you MUST manually change your time zone once then switch back to the original time zone to apply the updated the DST setting.)
• Palm
• Blackberry: User initiated, Administrative patch deployment
  

Identifying users with mobile devices and applying the appropriate patches can be challenging. Working in higher education I have no control over the active-sync mobile devices that connect to our Exchange servers. Thus I had to find a way to identify and notify users with mobile devices. Fortunately, we are running Exchange 2007 and I have the tools needed to accomplish such a task easily. Using the Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics cmdlet I was able to compile a list of devices that have synced within the last 2 weeks.

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize:Unlimited | ForEach {Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics -Mailbox:$_.Identity} | Where {$_.LastSuccessSync -gt '2/15/2007'}

Incorporating a couple of other PowerShell tools I was able to create a CSV file with the user’s email address and device type. Now I can e-mail device specific patching instructions to the effected users. As an added bonus I was able to accomplish this in a single line.

Get-Mailbox -ResultSize:Unlimited | ForEach {Get-ActiveSyncDeviceStatistics -Mailbox:$_.Identity} | Where {$_.LastSuccessSync -gt '2/15/2007'} | Sort-Object -Property DeviceType,Identity | Select-Object @{name="EmailAddress";expression={$_.Identity.ToString().Split("\")[0]}},DeviceType | Export-Csv -Path:"C:\Temp\MobileDevices.csv"

**Note: This method will only identify active-sync users. Blackberry users will not be included in the results.

–Nick