Exchange Admin Center is a browser-based application
designed for managing on-premises, online, and hybrid Exchange
organizations. You access Exchange Admin Center through the Client
Access servers deployed in your Exchange organization. Although the
application can be configured with an internal access URL and an
external access URL, only an internal access URL is configured by
default. This means that by default you can access Exchange Admin
Center only when you are on the corporate network.
1. Accessing Exchange Admin Center
Exchange
Admin Center is designed to be used with many operating systems and
browsers. However, to ensure all features are available you should use
Exchange Admin Center only with the following browser and operating
system combinations:
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For Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 use Internet Explorer 9 or later, Firefox 17 or later, or Chrome 24 or later.
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For Windows 8 or later and Windows Server 2012 RTM or R2 use
Internet Explorer 10 or later, Firefox 17 or later, or Chrome 24 or
later.
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For Mac OS X 10.5 or later use Firefox 17 or later, Safari 6 or later, or Chrome 24 or later.
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For Linux use Firefox 17 or later, or Chrome 24 or later.
Although Exchange Admin Center replaces Exchange Management Console
and Exchange Control Panel (ECP), ECP continues to be the name for the
related virtual directory. You access Exchange Admin Center by
following these steps:
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Open your web browser and enter the secure URL for Exchange Admin
Center. If you are outside the corporate network, enter the external
URL, such as https://mail.cpandl.com/ecp. If you are inside the corporate network, enter the internal URL, such as https://mailserver48/ecp.
The version of Exchange Admin Center you see depends on the version
of Exchange running on the Mailbox server hosting your personal
mailbox. Exchange 2010 runs version 14, and you can specify this
version explicitly by appending ?ExchClientVer=14 to the internal or external URL.
Exchange 2013 runs version 15, and you can specify this version explicitly by appending ?ExchClientVer=15 to the internal or external URL. For example, if your external URL is https://mail.pocket-consultant.com, you could enter https://mail.pocket-consultant.com/ecp?ExchClientVer=15 as the URL.
Note
By default, you must use HTTPS to connect. If you don’t, you’ll see
an error stating “Access is denied.” Using HTTPS ensures data
transmitted between the client browser and the server is encrypted and
secured.
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If your browser displays a security alert stating there’s a problem
with the site’s security certificate or that the connection is
untrusted, proceed anyway. This alert is displayed because the browser
does not trust the self-signed certificate that was automatically
created when the Exchange server was installed.
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With Internet Explorer, the error states “There’s a problem with
this website’s security certificate.” Proceed by selecting the Continue
To This Web Site (Not Recommended) link.
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With Google Chrome, the error states “The site’s security certificate is not trusted.” Continue by clicking Proceed Anyway.
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With Mozilla Firefox, the error states “This connection is
untrusted.” Proceed by selecting I Understand The Risks and then
selecting Add Exception. Finally, in the Add Security Exception dialog
box, select Confirm Security Exception.
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You’ll see the logon page for Exchange Admin Center. Enter your user name and password, and then tap or click Sign In.
Be sure to specify your user name in DOMAIN\username format. The
domain can either be the DNS domain, such as pocket-consultant.com, or
the NetBIOS domain name, such as pocket-consulta. For example, the user
AnneW could specify her logon name as pocket-consultant.com\annew or
pocket-consulta\annew.
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If you are logging on for the first time, select your preferred display language and time zone, and then tap or click Save.
After you log on to Exchange Admin Center, you’ll see the list view with manageable features listed in the feature pane (see Figure 1).
When you select a feature in the feature pane, you’ll then see the
related topics or “tabs” for that feature. The manageable items for a
selected topic or tab are displayed in the main area of the browser
window. For example, when you select Recipients in the feature pane,
the topics or tabs that you can work with are: Mailboxes, Groups,
Resources, Contacts, Shared, and Migration.
The navigation bar at the top of the window has several important
options. You use the Enterprise and Office 365 options for
cross-premises navigation. If there are notifications, tapping or
clicking the Notification icon displays the notifications as shown in Figure 1.
The User button shows the currently logged on user. Tapping or clicking
the User button allows you to log out or sign in as another user.
Although ECP for Exchange 2010 would return only 500 recipients at a
time, Exchange Admin Center doesn’t have this limitation since results
are paged so that you can go through results one page at a time. Up to
20,000 recipients can be returned in the result set. When working with
recipients, you can tap or click More to display options to:
If
you customize the view by adding or removing columns, the settings are
saved for the computer that you are using to access Exchange Admin
Center. However, because the settings are saved as browser cookies,
clearing the browser history will remove the custom settings.
When working with recipients, you typically can select
multiple items and perform bulk editing as long as you select like
items, such as mailbox users or mail-enabled contacts. Select multiple
items using the Shift or Ctrl key and then use bulk editing options in
the details pane to bulk edit the selected items.
