Organization

The Organization category includes Sharing, Apps and Address Lists. Sharing allows us to identify domains with whom we want to share free/busy data.

Apps are cloud friendly Exchange add-on applications. Exchange 2013 includes 3 Apps; Bing Maps, Suggested Appointments, and Action Items. We can expect more Apps from independent software vendors. These will be made available from the Office App store.

Lastly we have the Organization | Address Lists sub-category:

Protection

The Protection category brings the new Anti-malware options. To put this into context, I refer you to the announcement Microsoft made here: Important Changes to Forefront Product Roadmaps. Basically many of the Forefront products will be discontinued, including the on-premises Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange (FPE).

With the on-premises FPE out of the equation, Microsoft is promising to improve the message hygiene it provides out-of-the-box. This is where the anti-malware functionality fits into the picture. Of course Microsoft will continue advancing Forefront Online Protection for filtering emails at the cloud.

Here is what the Anti-malware default policy looks like:

There isn't much to configure. We can choose how the malware is to be deleted and the type of notifications sent when malware is detected. Looks like there will be plenty of opportunity for products like IMF Tune to beef this up.

Mail Flow

The Mail Flow category brings together many transport related options. Here we have Rules, Delivery Reports, Accepted Domains, Email Address Policies, Receive Connectors, and Send Connectors. These are pretty much the same settings as in Exchange 2007/2010. So we only take a quick look at Rules and Delivery Reports.

The Rules configuration interface is very similar to the one provided by the Exchange 2010 Control Panel discussed in Configuring Transport Rules from OWA/ECP

The Delivery Reports category provides an interface for searching messages within mailboxes. Here you basically select the mailbox to search, the Sender/Recipient, and the Subject.

Mobile

At the Mobile category we have Mobile Device Access and Mobile Device Policies. Here is the Mobile Device Access configuration page:

The 'edit' button shown at the right edge configures the Exchange ActiveSync access settings. This determines how devices, that are not "managed by a rule or personal exemptions", are to be handled. In this manner a device can be quarantined and a notification sent to the Administrator.

If we look back at the main Mobile Device Access page we can see the list of Quarantined Devices. This is where an Administrator moderates quarantined devices. From here devices are granted/denied access.

Lastly at the bottom of the Mobile Device Access page, we have the Device Access Rules list. This is what a rule looks like:

Next we take a look at the Mobile | Mobile Device Policies configuration page:

This is what the default policy looks like:

Final Tips

Today we continued exploring the various Exchange 2013 configuration categories. We looked at Organization, Protection, Mail Flow, and Mobile.

Apps are opening the door to cloud extensibility. It will be interesting to see what kind of applications independent software vendors will be providing.

The anti-malware functionality is another addition introduced in this release. With Microsoft discontinuing the on-premises Forefront Protection 2010 for Exchange, anti-malware is contributing to fill the void created in the internal email hygiene side.

References

Exchange 2013 Administration Center in Pictures (Part 3)

Exchange 2013 Administration Center in Pictures (Part 1)

Exchange 2013 Preview Installation