Configure Custom MailTips for Recipients

Applies to: Exchange Server 2010 SP3, Exchange Server 2010 SP2

Topic Last Modified: 2011-03-19

MailTips are informative messages displayed to users while they are composing a message. In Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, you can assign custom MailTips to recipients. You must specify a default custom MailTip.

You can assign MailTips in multiple languages. When a sender addresses a message to a recipient that has a custom MailTip configured, the MailTip translation that matches the language of the client the sender is using is displayed. If there's no MailTip translation that matches the client language, the default MailTip is displayed.

If some of your user mailboxes are hosted on Exchange Online and there's coexistence with an Exchange Online scenario, consider the following:

You must set the MailTipsAccessLevel parameter on the organization relationship to All. Otherwise, the custom MailTips aren't returned when the sender and the recipient are on either side of the organizational relationship.
Each mailbox is represented as a mail user on the other side of the organization relationship. For example, a mailbox hosted on Exchange Online is represented as a mail user in your on-premises deployment. If both of these recipients are configured with a custom MailTip, the local one is returned. In this example, the on-premises users that compose messages to that recipient will see the custom MailTip configured on the mail user, whereas Exchange Online users will see the custom MailTip configured on the mailbox.

Looking for other management tasks related to MailTips? Check out Managing MailTips.

Prerequisites

Make sure that MailTips are enabled in your organization. For detailed steps, see Configure Organizational Settings for MailTips. To learn more about MailTips, see Understanding MailTips.

Use the Shell to configure custom MailTips

You need to be assigned permissions before you can perform this procedure. To see what permissions you need, see the "Recipient data properties" entry in the Mailbox Permissions topic.

Note:
You can't use the EMC to configure custom MailTips.

You use the following cmdlets to configure custom MailTips for recipients:

Set-Mailbox
Set-MailContact
Set-MailUser
Set-DistributionGroup
Set-DynamicDistributionGroup
Set-MailPublicFolder

Custom MailTips can include HTML links, but no scripts are allowed. The length of a custom MailTip can't exceed 250 characters.

For example, assume that the response time service level agreement (SLA) for your Help Desk is two hours, and you have a Help Desk mailbox to which your users can submit problems. This example configures a custom MailTip for that mailbox to inform senders that they will receive a response within two hours.

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Set-Mailbox -Identity "Help Desk" -MailTip "A Help Desk representative will contact you within 2 hours."

Custom MailTips are also useful for recipients whose display name may be misunderstood. For example, assume that you have a distribution group called HR that's used for departmental communications. This example informs senders what the distribution group is used for and directs them to the correct address if they have a question or complaint to submit to Human Resources.

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Set-DistributionGroup -Identity "HR" -MailTip "This distribution group is used for Human Resources departmental communications. If you want to contact an HR representative, please e-mail HRQuestions@contoso.com."

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Set-DistributionGroup -Identity "HR" -MailTip "This distribution group is used for Human Resources departmental communications. If you want to contact an HR representative, please e-mail HRQuestions@contoso.com."

Custom MailTip translations are stored in the multivalued property MailTipTranslations on a recipient object. When you're adding a MailTip translation, be sure that you don't overwrite any existing MailTip translations. This example creates a custom MailTip for the mailbox Notifications@contoso.com informing the user that it isn't a monitored mailbox, and then adds the Spanish translation. This is done by using the temporary variable $Temp.

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Set-Mailbox -Identity Notifications@contoso.com -MailTip "This mailbox is not monitored." $Temp = Get-Mailbox Notifications@contoso.com $Temp.MailTipTranslations += "ES:Esta caja no se supervisa." Set-Mailbox -Identity Notifications@contoso.com -MailTipTranslations $Temp.MailTipTranslations

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Set-Mailbox -Identity Notifications@contoso.com -MailTip "This mailbox is not monitored."
$Temp = Get-Mailbox Notifications@contoso.com
$Temp.MailTipTranslations += "ES:Esta caja no se supervisa."
Set-Mailbox -Identity Notifications@contoso.com -MailTipTranslations $Temp.MailTipTranslations

Important:
You must use the preceding method when adding MailTip translations even if you're adding a single language. This is because the custom MailTip configured using the MailTip parameter is also stored in the MailTipTranslations parameter as the default translation.

For detailed syntax and parameter information, see the following topics: