Enterprise Wide Safe Senders List via Group Policy

[Kelly Harper]

I need a bit of assistance setting up a safe senders list for our employees
via group policy. We have the Outlook .adm file in place and have enabled
the policy to point to a .txt file for the safe senders list. I added the
registry key
HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Options\Mail\JunkMailImportLists
and set it to a value of 1 on the clients I am using to test this feature.
The safesend.txt file has one entry yet it does not show up on any of the
clients which have it enabled.

The safesend.txt file is on a network share which all employees have read
and execute permissions to. We are running Outlook 2003 in cached mode and
Exchange Server 2003 on the back-end. I have rebooted the test machines
multiple times and verified with 'gpresult /v' that the policy is being
pulled. No matter what I do, the safesend.txt list does not appear to get
imported.

Any help and/or tips would be greatly appreciated.

Kelly

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

What value are you using for the policy setting that tells Outlook where the Safesend.txt file is?

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Kelly Harper]

Sue,

Thank you very much for your response. The value in our policy is set to:

\\domain\share folder\subfolder\subfolder\safesend.txt

The UNC above links to a DFS share which is replicated on the back-end but
which appears as a common name to all employees. I have done more testing
since the first post and seen interesting results. With Outlook 2003 in
cached mode, the list is NEVER pulled down. If I turn cached mode off, the
list is pulled down once and then the reg key automatically sets the value to
0 and as a result, fails to pull the list down again unless I manually toggle
it back on. Is this by design or is this addressed with a hotfix, etc.? My
understanding is that when working, this process allows for for an enterprise
to centrally and dynamically maintain the whitelist and blacklist?

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

The resetting of the key is by design, for performance issues. The behavior changes in SP2 (and a previous hotfix), which will allow the list to be updated each time Outlook starts.

I don't know why cached mode would have an effect on whether the list is imported, especially since only Cached Exchange mode uses the junk mail filter.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers

 

[Kelly Harper]

Sue,

Thank you again for the info. I installed SP2 to address the
performance/reg changes and love it. I'm still scratching my head on the
cached mode issue for exactly the reason you mention; cache mode is required
for junk mail filtering.

Do you know of any technically detailed documents that describe the process
Outlook and Exchange use during cached mode to pass the junk mail filter
info? I'm curious if there is something in our environment that is blocking
the transfer or if there is something else I need to consider.

Kelly

 

[Sue Mosher [MVP-Outlook]]

No, I've never seen any such documents. Because the junk mail filter feature resides entirely on the client, Outlook is processing local data stored in the .ost file.

--
Sue Mosher, Outlook MVP
Author of Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2003

and Microsoft Outlook Programming - Jumpstart for
Administrators, Power Users, and Developers