Ecxhange 2003/Outlook 2007

[Earthling]

Hiya, not often I;m stuck for a solution but there's always the odd occasion.......

 

We installed Exchange 2003 last September and created mailboxes and accounts for the staff and all the students.

 

Everything's been fine until the year 9's reached the e-mail part of their ICT course. Then, one of the little blee.......darlings....sent a mail to the whole of the GAL, which being global includes all the staff.

 

My head's knee-jerk reaction was 'Stop them doing it'. No discussion, no dialog....just 'Stop them doing it'.

 

So, I denied all year groups access to the GAL, now, of course, the students who haven't created their Outlook account yet, can't do so, because they're denied access to the GAL.

 

Just wondering if anyone else had this problem, and if so, how did you get round it.

 

TIA

[MattCrick]

I thought about denying access to the GAL for students, but it caused problems as email addresses wouldn't autocomplete which I decided was too irritating to live with...

 

I decided to set the global default recipient limit to 7 or so. That does mean ofcourse that you have to use ADModify or something similar to take staff users out of this policy and set manually back to 5000 or whatever.

 

Re-run the Update Recipient Services after you've made the changes if you can't wait til the next refresh...

 

It's still a bit quirky but its the best solution I've found...

 

HTH

 

Matt

[Earthling]

Thanks, Matt, I'll look into it.

 

The best solution, of course, is better classrom control, implementation of an AUP and application of consequences and sanctions for those who contravene the AUP.

 

But that would be in an Ideal World, I guess, not in mine.

 

Thanks again,

 

Earthling

[MattCrick]

Well indeed, but then I often find that teacher's particularly like passing the buck and prefer a technological solution than just greater classroom control. We obviously need to play our part but sometimes the latter is the only solution...

 

Apologies to any teachers here, no offence implied...

[Abaddon]

Best solution, and what I have done here, is to create different Mailbox Stores for staff and students, and deny the students access to the staff address list. You can then apply rules as you see fit to the different groups.

[Earthling]

Thanks, I'll look into that, too.

 

[SpuffMonkey]

Best solution, and what I have done here, is to create different Mailbox Stores for staff and students, and deny the students access to the staff address list. You can then apply rules as you see fit to the different groups.

 

Trouble is - I start to wonder why we give students email, if they are not allowed to contact the teaching staff with it??

[Abaddon]

They can.. they just have to type it in instead. It just stops the OP's problem of them selecting everyone and spamming the whole school.