In this post I’ll look at how to configure a postmaster address for our Exchange Organisation.

The postmaster address is used for non-delivery reports (NDRs) sent to recipients outside of your Exchange Organisation and is specified in RFC 2821.

In Exchange 2013 the external postmaster address is blank by default. This has the effect of the external postmaster address being postmaster@YourDefaultAcceptedDomain.

It can be useful to create a postmaster mailbox, or assign the email address to an admin mailbox so that recipients can reply to NDR messages for assistance. Anyone who is familiar with NDRs will appreciate they are far more useful to admins than they are to end users! The downside of this though is as it’s a well known address it can be open to abuse and spam.

Exchange Admin Center

1. In the Exchange admin center (https://localhost/ecp) click mail flow on the left hand side, and then click receive connectors, then click the more options …,  then select Organizational transport settings.

2. Select delivery in the left hand menu, and then enter yout external postmaster address and click save.

3. So with the postmaster address now configured, you have the option of creating a mailbox for it, assigning it to an existing mailbox, or not configuring it at all.




Exchange Management Shell

To perform the same tasks in the Exchange Management Shell we’ll use Get-TransportConfig and Set-TransportConfig.

1. First type Get-TransportConfig | fl

As you can see the ExternalPostmasterAddress is blank.

2. Type Set-TransportConfig -ExternalPostmasterAddress postmaster@oxfordsbsguy.com

3. We’ll now check is has set with the following command:

Get-TransportConfig | fl ExternalPostmasterAddress

4. So with the postmaster address now configured, you have the option of creating a mailbox for it or assigning it to an existing mailbox, or not configuring it at all.

For the other articles in this series please go to:

• Exchange 2013 Cumulative Update installation tips and best practices
• How to install Exchange 2013 (SP1) on Windows Server 2012 R2
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: Setting SMTP accepted domains (Part 1)
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: Setting email address policies (Part 2)
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: Rename and move the default mailbox database and logs (Part 3)
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: Change mailbox size limits (Part 4)
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: Create a send connector (Part 5)
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: Set the offline address book (Part 6)
  
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: Enter the Product Key (Part 7)
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: How to configure a Postmaster address (Part 8)
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: How to change the FQDN on the default frontend receive connector (Part 9)
• Exchange 2013 Initial Configuration Settings: How to configure the virtual directories (part 10)
• Create and apply an SSL certificate (work in progress)