Microsoft Exchange Server security is integrated with the
Windows NT and Windows 2000 user accounts database. The Windows NT and Windows
2000 domain controllers do not generate password expiration warnings for
certain Exchange and Outlook clients. This is the case, for example, with
Macintosh-based clients or Microsoft Windows 3.x clients that use the NetWare Netx redirector. Moreover, Microsoft
clients Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Windows NT that are running Outlook and
are not part of a Windows Domain will not receive the password expiration
notification due to not logging on to a domain. This causes administrators and
Help Desk personnel to spend time resetting passwords. An application called
the Password Expiration Warning Application (PEWA) exists that allows
administrators to send password expiration notices to those clients.
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PEWA was created for systems in which Microsoft Exchange
Server supports clients running on different platforms. The application sends
an e-mail message to each Microsoft Exchange client in the system when the
Microsoft Windows NT account password associated with its mailbox is about to
expire, regardless of the platform on which the client is running. The message
text can be modified.
A small side effect of using PEWA, however, is
that clients running on a Windows NT platform receive two expiration notices
(one from Windows NT and one from PEWA) because PEWA cannot distinguish between
clients.
PEWA cannot be used in a non-Microsoft Exchange environment.
The messaging server must have Microsoft Exchange Server version 4.x or version 5.x installed on it.
PEWA enumerates the accounts with
expiring passwords in the domain and determines the security identifier (SID)
for each of the accounts. The application then queries the Global Address List
(GAL) for matches to the SIDs. If matches are found, PEWA then derives the
e-mail names of these accounts and sends a message to the respective users
notifying them that the passwords for their mailbox accounts are about to
expire. PEWA sends each user an individual message to avoid replies to
everyone.
PEWA version 2.0 is included in the Microsoft Back Office
Resource Kit or the Exchange 2000 Resource Kit.
PEWA has been
successfully tested on Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000.
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