Understanding Custom Attributes

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and Exchange Server 2007 include 15 extension attributes. You can use these attributes to add information about a recipient, such as an employee ID, organizational unit (OU), or some other custom value for which there isn't an existing attribute. These custom attributes are labeled in Active Directory as ms-Exch-Extension-Attribute1 through ms-Exch-Extension-Attribute15. In the Exchange Management Shell, the corresponding parameters are CustomAttribute1 through CustomAttribute15. These attributes aren't used by any Exchange components. They can be used to store Active Directory data without having to extend the Active Directory schema.

In Exchange Server 2003 and earlier, if you wanted to store this information in Active Directory, you had to create an attribute by extending the Active Directory schema. Schema extension requires planning, procuring object identifiers (OIDs) for new attributes, and testing the extension process in a test environment before you implement it in a production environment. In Exchange 2010 and Exchange 2007, user-defined Active Directory schema extensions can't be used in recipient filters used by address lists, e-mail address policies, and dynamic distribution groups.

Contents

Advantages of Custom Attributes

Custom Attributes Examples

Custom Attributes Example with the ConditionalCustomAttributes Parameter

Advantages of Custom Attributes

Some of the advantages of using custom attributes include:

• You avoid extending the Active Directory schema.
• The attributes are created by Exchange Setup.
• You can use the Exchange Management Console (EMC) or the Exchange Management Shell to manage the attributes. You don't need to build custom controls or write scripts to populate and display these attributes.
• The attributes are filterable properties that can be used in the Filter parameter with recipient cmdlets such as Get-Mailbox. They can also used in the EMC and the Shell to create filters for e-mail address policies, address lists, and dynamic distribution groups.

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Custom Attribute Examples

In many Exchange deployments, creating an e-mail address policy for all recipients in an OU is a common scenario. The OU isn't a filterable property that can be used in the RecipientFilter parameter of an e-mail address policy or an address list.

If the recipients in that OU don't share any common properties that you can filter by, such as department or location, you can populate one of the custom attributes with a common value, as shown in this example.

Get-Mailbox -OrganizationalUnit Sales | Set-Mailbox CustomAttribute1 "SalesOU"

Now you can create an e-mail address policy for all recipients that have the CustomAttribute1 property that equals SalesOU, as shown in this example.

New-EmailAddressPolicy -Name "Sales" -RecipientFilter { CustomAttribute1 -eq "SalesOU"} -EnabledEmailAddressTemplates "SMTP:%s%2g@sales.contoso.com"

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Custom Attribute Example with the ConditionalCustomAttributes Parameter

When creating dynamic distribution groups, e-mail address policies, or address lists, you don't need to use the RecipeintFilter parameter to specify custom attributes. You can use the ConditionalCustomAttribute1 to ConditionalCustomAttribute15 parameters instead. You can create a dynamic distribution group based on the recipients whose CustomAttribute1 is set to SalesOU, as shown in this example.

New-DynamicDistributionGroup -Name "Sales Users and Contacts" -IncludedRecipients "MailboxUsers,MailContacts" -ConditionalCustomAttribute1 "SalesOU"

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