AD 2003/Exch 2007 - new mail-enabled user based on template

I would like to implement a series of disabled "template" user accounts that had the group memberships and other attributes that match up with the various departmental roles within my company.

I thought this through several months ago, before Exchange 2007 ever came into the picture at my company. It's simple enough to have a disabled mail user account out there and make a copy of it from ADUC when you have a new user in that role. However, I know that in Exchange 2007, it's generally very bad to create mail users from ADUC and not recommended to modify Exchange attributes in the ADUC. In practice, we haven't put 2007 into production yet so I have no practical experience with this.

Is there a non-powershell way to copy a disabled mailbox user account that is safe? I'm sure I could hack a powershell solution, but I'm trying to keep it GUI for the sake of the Jr. Admins on the team, and for the sake of time on my part of coming up with a Powershell script scripts to handle each of the employee roles for which we'd have a template.

Anyone doing this with Exchange 2007?
Thanks

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HeroPsycho

Why not copy an AD account, then mailbox enable it?

You can create a bunch of AD accounts, then mass mailbox enable them through Exchange Management Console at one time. Select Create Mailbox, then select Existing Users, and select multiple mailboxes to be done simultaneously.

blargoe

HeroPsycho wrote:

Why not copy an AD account, then mailbox enable it?

You can create a bunch of AD accounts, then mass mailbox enable them through Exchange Management Console at one time. Select Create Mailbox, then select Existing Users, and select multiple mailboxes to be done simultaneously.

Hi,

Primarily, because I've found that it'll generate error messages if someone sends to a distribution group of which the template is a member, if the template is not a valid mail user. If I have to mailbox enable the copied user in a separate process and then manually go back and add DL's, then I might as well just do it all manually.

I did see the -TemplateInstance switch in powershell for new-mailbox, I guess that's probably where I need to look to accomplish this.

Thanks for the reply.

HeroPsycho

Yeah, unfortunately there are still things you can only do in Powershell and can't do in EMC. Best to get your junior level guys up to speed with EMS; even they're gonna need it.