Exchange Web Services for Mailbox Access

Mail Manager

Creating your Own Tools with Visual Studio and EWS

The EWS interface and Visual Studio also let you create your own tools. For this, you need VisualStudio and the Managed EWS API. Microsoft describes the first steps to develop your own client application in detail on the Exchange site [8].

An open source project named EwsEditor [9] (Figure 2) shows how extensive the possibilities are. The project is public, and everyone can download and view the code. The program lets you access the root structure of a mailbox; it not only lets you view elements but also edit them directly. This makes it a very powerful tool and similar to the Microsoft Exchange MAPI Editor (known as MFCMAPI); it is a useful helper for Exchange administrators and developers.

Figure 2: The EwsEditor grants access to the root structure of a mailbox and is an example of the powerful functions available via Exchange Web Services.

Conclusions

In this article, we've shown various possibilities for the use of the Exchange Web Services interface. Because the services otherwise used internally by Exchange offer powerful functionality, you don't have to program your own tool. With just PowerShell, Exchange can be accessed easily and quickly via EWS. For the administrator, this offers new automation approaches, and our examples provide additional food for thought.

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