New features in EWS in Exchange 2013
Updated: December 18, 2012
Learn about the new EWS features that are introduced in Exchange Server 2013.
Applies to: Exchange 2013 | Exchange Online
Exchange Web Services (EWS) has been updated to include the following new features in Exchange Server 2013:
eDiscovery
Archiving
Personas
Unified Contact Store
Retention policies
User photos
Mail apps for Outlook
eDiscovery is a federated query web service that enables external applications, such as SharePoint 2013, to perform queries of Exchange data. Discovery consists of several phases, including identifying and preserving key data, culling down and reviewing the data, and producing data in court. eDiscovery queries facilitate the discovery process by providing a single discovery workflow across Exchange and SharePoint.
The eDiscovery functionality that is exposed by EWS is made available by means of new operations that are introduced in Exchange 2013. The following table lists the new operations.
Operation name | Description |
|---|---|
Gets configuration information for in-place holds, saved discovery searches, and the mailboxes that are enabled for discovery search. | |
Gets the status of a query-based hold, which is set by using the SetHoldOnMailboxes operation. | |
Gets details about items that cannot be indexed. This includes, but is not limited to, the item identifier, an error code, an error description, when an attempt was made to index the item, and additional information about the item. | |
Gets the count of items that cannot be indexed in a mailbox. | |
Gets a list of mailboxes that the client has permission to search or perform eDiscovery on. | |
Searches for items in specific mailboxes that match query keywords. | |
Sets a query-based hold on items. |
Archive mailboxes are secondary mailboxes that are associated with a user. Archive mailboxes are typically used to manage email storage limits. For example, older email items might periodically be moved from the Inbox to the archive mailbox.
Exchange Server 2013 introduces two new EWS operations that you can use to archive a set of mail items from a primary mailbox. Archiving Inbox items in this way preserves the folder hierarchy of the items. In addition, archive mailboxes can now be stored either locally on a client, or remotely, in a way that is mostly opaque to a user, by using a folder path to point to the contents of the archive.
The following table lists the new archiving operations that are introduced in Exchange 2013.
Operation name | Description |
|---|---|
Moves an item from the primary mailbox to the archive mailbox. | |
Creates a folder hierarchy. |
A persona is a collection of data that is associated with an individual. The data can come from one or more sources and is associated with the persona by means of a common link ID. Personas in EWS in Exchange 2013 enable you to link, search, browse, and retrieve information about a person from multiple sources and organize that information into a single logical entity. Personas differ from contacts in that a contact is a collection of data from a single source that is associated with an individual; for example, a personal Outlook contact or an entry in a global address list (GAL).
 Note |
|---|
The Unified Contact Store also exposes persona functionality by means of the operations that support that feature. |
The following table lists the new operations that are introduced in Exchange 2013 that support personas.
Operation name | Description |
|---|---|
Returns all persona objects from a specified contact folder or retrieves all contacts that match a specified query string. | |
Retrieves a persona. |
The Unified Contact Store is a feature that provides a consistent contact experience across Office products and acts as an integration point for third-party applications to use the same contact store. It allows users and applications to store, manage, and access contact information and make it available globally among Lync, Exchange 2013, Outlook, Outlook Web App and any other application that implements access to the Unified Contact Store. Exchange 2013 is the contact store for the Unified Contact Store experience. The following table lists the new operations.
Operation name | Description |
|---|---|
Adds a new IM contact to a group. The Unified Contact Store can contain a maximum of 1000 contacts. | |
Adds an existing IM contact to a group. The Unified Contact Store can contain a maximum of 1000 contacts. | |
Adds a new IM group. The Unified Contact Store can contain a maximum of 64 groups. | |
Adds a new contact to a group based on a contact's phone number. | |
Adds a new distribution list group. The Unified Contact Store can contain a maximum of 64 groups. | |
Retrieves a list of IM groups and IM contact personas. | |
Retrieves information about the specified IM groups and IM contact personas. | |
Removes the specified contact from all IM groups. | |
Removes an IM contact from a group. | |
Removes the specified IM distribution list group. | |
Removes the specified IM group. | |
Changes the display name of a group. |
Retention policies are policies that are used in Exchange 2013 to group one or more retention tags, to apply retention settings to folders or individual items such as email and voice mail messages, and to apply retention settings to a mailbox.
Exchange 2013 includes three types of retention tags:
Default policy tags that apply to mailbox items that have no other type of retention tag applied.
System folder policy tags that are applied to default folders such as the Inbox.
Personal tags that a user can apply to folders they create or to individual items.
Only one retention policy can be assigned to a mailbox, but the policy can have one or more retention tags of various types linked to it. Retention tags can be linked to or unlinked from a retention policy at any time. EWS in Exchange 2013 exposes a new operation that provides a list of all the tags that are linked to a retention policy. This functionality is provided by the GetUserRetentionPolicyTags operation. You can set and retrieve retention policy tags for items and folders by using the CreateItem, CreateFolder, UpdateItem, UpdateFolder, GetItem, and GetFolder operations.
You can request user photos from the Exchange server by using one of the two implementations of the GetUserPhoto operation: REST or SOAP. The REST endpoint uses a standard HTTPS GET request to get the user photo. The service will either return a user photo stored in Exchange or a photo from Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS).
You can now block senders and mark email as junk by using the new MarkAsJunk operation in EWS in Exchange 2013.
EWS now contains operations to support managing mail apps for Outlook. The following table lists the new operations.
Operation name | Description |
|---|---|
Disables an installed app. | |
Gets the app manifests for a mailbox. | |
Gets the app marketplace URL. | |
Gets client access tokens. | |
Installs an app for a mailbox. | |
Uninstalls an app from a mailbox. |
Date | Description |
|---|---|
December 18, 2012 | Added links to new operation content. |
July 16, 2012 | Initial publication |
