Exchange 2013: Predicted Actions Enabled

Categories & Subject Descriptions: User Interface evaluation, Interaction Styles**.**

General Terms: Experimentation, Human Factor, Performance**.**

Keywords: Customization, interaction techniques, menu design, user study, Adaptable Interface, Adaptive actions, Predict actions.

INTRODUCTION

As Administrators, we are very much aware of every user-friendly mailbox policy and feature which might help the everyday user in your organizations. Let's touch upon a topic which might not be that very important and useful from an admin point of view but something which most of the Microsoft Office administrators may be familiar with. It’s not a widely used feature but is very much similar to Adaptive menus in legacy MS Office applications like Word, Excel, etc..

What is it all about?

Here, we are speaking about an OWA MAILBOX POLICY which is by default disabled for all Outlook Web App (OWA) users and which can be enabled by Exchange administrators. PredictedActionsEnabled is an Outlook Web App Feature, and which helps an Outlook Web App user to customize the commands and icons they see according to what they are doing. This is very similar to Adaptive Menus feature from earlier Office applications. This is a very complex approach which is appreciated by users who have a regular pattern of use but can be disliked by users who do not want their menus or available buttons to be constantly changing. This is a feature which is NOT a USER CONTROLLED feature. Even then we do not know much about the PredictedActionsEnabled feature as it’s not widely in use by users in OWA, so if it’s beneficial or a pain is yet to be identified. We aren’t even sure if users are aware that they have such a feature available to be explored.

Setting values for this Policy:

As administrators are aware, there are many OWA mailbox policies which are only available through Exchange Management Shell (EWS). PredictedActionsEnabled is one of them.

To check if it’s there in your environment try this cmdlet:

 Get-OWAMailboxPolicy XXX |fl

This is what you’ll probably see…

RecoverDeletedItemsEnabled                          : True
InstantMessagingEnabled                             : True
TextMessagingEnabled                                : True
ForceSaveAttachmentFilteringEnabled                 : False
SilverlightEnabled                                  : True
InstantMessagingType                                : None
DisplayPhotosEnabled                                : True
SetPhotoEnabled                                     : True
AllowOfflineOn                                      : AllComputers
SetPhotoURL                                         : 
PlacesEnabled                                       : False
AllowCopyContactsToDeviceAddressBook                : True
PredictedActionsEnabled                             : False
UserDiagnosticEnabled                               : False
FacebookEnabled                                     : True
LinkedInEnabled                                     : True
WacExternalServicesEnabled                          : True
WacOMEXEnabled                                      : False
ReportJunkEmailEnabled                              : False
WebPartsFrameOptionsType                            : SameOrigin
AdminDisplayName                                    : 
ExchangeVersion                                     : 0.10 (14.0.100.0)
Name                                                : Enterprise
DistinguishedName                                   : CN=Enterprise,CN=OWA Mailbox Policies,CN=ENTERPRISE,CN=Microsoft 

Although this feature has a “FALSE” value by default, it can be set to “TRUE” by using a simple PowerShell cmdlet:

Set-CASMailbox -Identity Default -OWAMailbox policy -PredictedActionsEnabled $true

Now to the icing on the cake:

Thanks for reading the article but the bad news is, that this feature/parameter currently can’t be changed in EXCHANGE 2013. Feedback has been sent to Exchange product/testing team. (Confirmed by Microsoft Contingent Staff)

Closing comments:

Hopefully, in your environment (apart from EXC 2013), you can try and use this feature and come up with questions and suggestions.