Message moderation is a new feature in Exchange 2010, which establishes an approval process for email delivery to distribution groups. Read my previous article to get an idea of how this works in 2010.
While writing the previous article, I was surprised to find that the "Message Moderation" option is not present in the properties of a dynamic distribution group.
To be honest, most of the large distribution groups in an organization will be a dynamic one. The "AllStaff" group will be a typical example. The dynamic distribution group makes administration easier.
Now that the message moderation option is not exposed in GUI for dynamic distribution groups, let me explain how to do this with an example.
I am having a dynamic distribution group called "All Staff", which has all users with mailboxes. I need to configure myself as the moderator for this group. Run the following command to achieve the same.
Set-DynamicDistributionGroup "All Staff" -ModerationEnabled $true -Moderator "Rajith"
Check the settings by running Get-DynamicDistributionGroup "All Staff" | fl moderat*
Now, my colleague Deepak sends an email to All Staff group.
I get an email seeking approval.
Once approved, the message gets delivered to everyone in the group. Now you can protect all distribution groups in 2010!
Though it won’t be of much help, you can still enable message moderation for a user using the same shell commands.
Set-Mailbox –identity “user” –ModerationEnabled $true –Moderator “user”
Please disregard my previous comment about not being able to add multiple moderators using comma or comma+space, the right syntax that worked was:
set-dynamicdistributiongroup “mydistributiongroupname” -moderationenabled $true -moderatedby user1,user2,user3,user4 -sendmoderationnotifications internal
I was adding double quotes before and after the moderator names which is wrong!
thanks again.
Ash
Thanks Ash.
I enabled Moderation on multiple Dynamic DLs in an Exchange 2010 platform, and it doesn’t work. I have confirmed it’s enabled and there is a moderator on the group. It just doesn’t do anything and when sending an email to a moderated DL, I do not see the HINT at the top indicating this group is moderated.
-Moderator should be -ModeratedBy in your scripts
Thanks Mark.
thanks for the article, but how do we add multiple moderators through the shell to the dynamic distribution group
HI Mustansir,
Just put a comma and add the second name.
-ModeratedBy does not accept multiple moderators set with a comma in between or comma+space between.
Is there another way of adding multiple moderators for Dynamic distribution group using power shell?
thanks.
This works great, however I can't find anyway in powershell to exclude certain users from moderation as you can through the console
Use the command set-dynamicdistributiongroup with the -bypassModerationFromSendersOrMembers option
that is the same as the GUI method to bypass who needs to be moderated.