This is a very quick tip (with a script) that enables you to create an icon for the Exchange Administrative Centre in Exchange 2013 on your desktop. Whilst perhaps not the most earth shattering tip – and indeed it is one that is aimed at administrators who are less familiar with Exchange 2013 in some cases it proves quite useful.
For those of you who don’t know, Exchange 2013 has disbanded the concept of the traditional MMC based interface for administering Exchange, and adopted a new web based interface called the “Exchange Administrative Centre” (or EAC for short).
When you install Exchange 2013 – a link to this management interface is not created by default – and administrators have to use a URL similar to the following: https://ExchangeServerName/ecp from within Internet Explorer.
The following script will create a shortcut to the EAC on your administrative desktop:
<#
.DESCRIPTION
Create EAC Admin Link for Exchange 2013
.CREDITS & COPYRIGHT
2012 (c) Telnetport25.com
Author: Andy Grogan
.VERSION
1.0
#>
Get-PSSnapin Microsoft.Exchange.* -Registered -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue | Out-Null
if(!$?){
Write-Host "The Exchange Management Admin Tools are not installed on this server." -ForegroundColor Red
Write-Host "This script should be executed on an Exchange 2013 server with the management tools installed." -BackgroundColor Red -ForegroundColor White
exit(1)
}else{
Write-Host "The Exchange Management Tools are installed." -BackgroundColor Green -ForegroundColor Black
Write-Host "Creating Icon..." -ForegroundColor Green
$ServerName = $ENV:COMPUTERNAME
$Name = "Exchange 2013 Administrative Centre"
$Target = "https://$ServerName/ecp"
$WSO = new-object -com "WScript.Shell"
$path = $WSO.SpecialFolders.item("AllUsersDesktop")
$URL = $WSO.CreateShortcut( (join-path $path $Name) + ".lnk" )
$URL.TargetPath = $Target
$URL.IconLocation = "https://$ServerName/owa/auth/15.0.516/themes/resources/favicon.ico"
$URL.Save()
}
I have personally found this to be quite useful – especially if you run the script just after you have installed Exchange 2013. Of course you can do this manually should you wish to by dragging and dropping the URL from the IE address bar to your local desktop – but if you have a number of Exchange Servers – you may wish to use the script to automate the process.
Download
[ CreateExchangeAdminCentreIcon.ps1 – 1.5KB ]
Usage
In order to use the script – download it to your Exchange 2013 server and follow the guidance for running PowerShell scripts that I have provided here. Alternatively you can copy the code above to a new PS1 file on your Exchange Server.