Develop Reference

EWS Displays Emails very slow

I am using Exchange Services in my Application Code to display list of emails on application UI. However, it is able to retrieve emails list. But it takes very very long to display all set. If I decrease number of emails to display it takes less time to display.
public static List<EmailMsg> GetEmailListInFolder(string folderName)
{
var folderId = GetFolderId(folderName);
var service = GetExchangeService();
if (folderId != null)
{
var emails = new List<EmailMsg>();
var count = 0;
var findResults = service.FindItems(folderId, new ItemView(100));
foreach (var item in findResults.Items)
{
var emailPropertySet = new PropertySet(
BasePropertySet.FirstClassProperties,
new PropertyDefinitionBase[]{
new ExtendedPropertyDefinition(4115, MapiPropertyType.Binary)
});
var message = EmailMessage.Bind(service, item.Id, emailPropertySet);
emails.Add(new EmailMsg(folderName, count++, item.Id.UniqueId, message.Subject, message.DateTimeReceived.ToString("yyyy-MMM-dd HH:mm:ss"), ""));
}
return emails;
}
return null;
}
When I debug code and found out that it takes few seconds on this line to before proceeding to next line.
var message = EmailMessage.Bind(service, item.Id, emailPropertySet);
Kindly, suggest me a way to decrease the loading time of my email items. Thanks

You are returning all the BasePropertySet.FirstClassProperties!
You might want to consider changing this to just return the properties you need.
List of FirstClassProperties from msdn:
Id
ParentFolderId
ItemClass
Subject
Sensitivity
Body
Attachments
DateTimeReceived
Size
Categories
Importance
InReplyTo
IsSubmitted
IsDraft
IsFromMe
IsResend
IsUnmodified
InternetMessageHeaders
DateTimeSent
DateTimeCreated
AllowedResponseActions
ReminderDueBy
IsReminderSet
ReminderMinutesBeforeStart
DisplayCc
DisplayTo
HasAttachments
Culture
EffectiveRights
LastModifiedName
LastModifiedTime
IsAssociated
WebClientReadFormQueryString
WebClientEditFormQueryString
ConversationId
Flag
InstanceKey
EntityExtractionResult
Sender
ToRecipients
CcRecipients
BccRecipients
IsReadReceiptRequested
IsDeliveryReceiptRequested
ConversationIndex
ConversationTopic
From
InternetMessageId
IsRead
IsResponseRequested
ReplyTo
References
ReceivedBy
ReceivedRepresenting
You are loading the Attachments. To avoid this big load you can either:
Load the attachement only when you are on a specific mail.
Load only the properties
with LoadPropertiesForItems
and getting the attachments name, extention, etc without getting the real attachement.
Then getting the real attachment can be done using ExchangeService.GetAttachments

Physical address order of Zip/City

I am using EWS to add contact items to an office365 account.
Everything works fine, just one detail is not as expected.
When I create a new contact and add e.g. the home address like this:
if (ewsContact.PhysicalAddresses.Contains(PhysicalAddressKey.Home) == false)
{
ewsContact.PhysicalAddresses[PhysicalAddressKey.Home] = new PhysicalAddressEntry();
}
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(contact.HomeZip) == false)
{
ewsContact.PhysicalAddresses[PhysicalAddressKey.Home].PostalCode = contact.HomeZip;
}
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(contact.HomeCity) == false)
{
ewsContact.PhysicalAddresses[PhysicalAddressKey.Home].City = contact.HomeCity;
}
The data is written to the contact item, but in the combined field and on the card view in Outlook the ordering of Zip and City is always the order that is used in the US - e.g. Washington 98155
As I have a lot of addresses from europe, I need the correct order - e.g. 10115 Berlin.
If I open the contact in Outlook, change the Zip code at one position and save it back, the order is saved correctly and the display in Outlook is correct.
Is there any way to have the correct order with EWS?

You will need to set the PidLidWorkAddress property https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/cc815905.aspx which should contain the address information formatted in the locale of the client. So in EWS you need to set this using the Extended property definition eg
ExtendedPropertyDefinition PidLidWorkAddress = new ExtendedPropertyDefinition(DefaultExtendedPropertySet.Address, 0x801B, MapiPropertyType.String);
ewsContact.SetExtendedProperty(PidLidWorkAddress, AddressValue);

Find a recipient with a given address in a folder

My company needs an add-in for automatically adding offers to the email when it is the first time we send an email to a recipient.
My question is :
How can I check if this is the first time the user sends an email to the recipients?
I tried this but I receive error that Recipient is unknown property. And I also think that this is not the right approach...
object folderItem;
Boolean AlreadyEmailed = false;
if (mail != null)
{
const string PR_SMTP_ADDRESS =
"http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x39FE001E";
Outlook.Recipients recips = mail.Recipients;
foreach (Outlook.Recipient recip in recips)
{
Outlook.PropertyAccessor pa = recip.PropertyAccessor;
string smtpAddress =
pa.GetProperty(PR_SMTP_ADDRESS).ToString();
string filter = "[Recipient] = 'John#foo.com'";
filter = filter.Replace("John#foo.com", smtpAddress);
Debug.WriteLine(filter);
folderItem = items.Restrict(filter);
if(folderItem != null)
{
Debug.WriteLine("We found items that have the filter");
AlreadyEmailed = true;
}
//Debug.WriteLine(recip.Name + " SMTP=" + smtpAddress);
}
if(!AlreadyEmailed)
{
Debug.WriteLine("This is the first time we email ... ");
}
}

The Sent property of the MailItem class returns a Boolean value that indicates if a message has been sent. In general, there are three different kinds of messages: sent, posted, and saved. Sent messages are items sent to a recipient or public folder. Posted messages are created in a public folder. Saved messages are created and saved without either sending or posting.
Also you may use the following Extended MAPI properties that deal with the message state (replied/forwarded):
PR_ICON_INDEX (http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x10800003)
PR_LAST_VERB_EXECUTED (the DASL name is http://schemas.microsoft.com/mapi/proptag/0x10810003)
PR_LAST_VERB_EXECUTION_TIME (0x10820040)
To get these values use the PropertyAccessor class (see the corresponding properties of Outlook items).
Be aware, new Outlook items don't have the EntryID property set.

You can Use To/CC/BCC properties in Items.Find/Restrict. Note that it is better to use Find in your case since you only need a single match, not all of them. Also note that Restrict will not return null if no matches are found, but rather an Items collection with Items.Count == 0.
That being said, To/CC/BCC might not include addresses, only names, so search won't help you. You can still loop through all items in the folder and explicitly check the Recipients collection of each item, but that will be hugely inefficient.
On the Extended MAPI level (C++ or Delphi), one can create subrestrictions on message recipients (or attachments), but the Outlook Object Model does not expose that functionality.
If using Redemption is an option (I am its author), its implementation of Find/Restrict does support queries on the Recipients collection:
set Session = CreateObject("Redemption.RDOSession")
Session.MAPIOBJECT = Application.Session.MAPIOBJECT
set YourOutlookFolder = Application.ActiveExplorer.CurrentFolder
set rFolder = Session.GetFolderFromID(YourOutlookFolder.EntryID)
set rItems = rFolder.Items
set rMsg = rItems.Find("Recipients LIKE 'John#foo.com' ")
while not (rMsg Is Nothing)
Debug.print rMsg.Subject
set rMsg = rItems.FindNext
wend
In C# (not tested):
Redemption.RDOSession Session = new Redemption.RDOSession();
Session.MAPIOBJECT = Application.Session.MAPIOBJECT;
set rFolder = Session.GetFolderFromID(YourOutlookFolder.EntryID);
Redemption.RDOMail rMsg = rFolder.Items.Find("Recipients LIKE 'John#foo.com' ") ;
AlreadyEmailed = rMsg != null;

casting objects in c# (Exchange Web Services Item to Email)

I cannot work out how I can do what I need to do.
I have a method called 'MarkAsRead' that takes an ItemID and should mark the mail item as read.
But it seems that the Item doesn't have an 'IsRead' proeprty, only an email does, so I need to cast my Exchange WebServices mail item to an email message.
here is the code:
try
{
System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
//creates an object that will represent the desired mailbox
Mailbox mb = new Mailbox(common.strInboxURL);
//creates a folder object that will point to inbox fold
FolderId fid = new FolderId(WellKnownFolderName.Inbox, mb);
//this will bind the mailbox you're looking for using your service instance
Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder inbox = Microsoft.Exchange.WebServices.Data.Folder.Bind(service, fid);
//// if the property is not loaded yet, first load it
//mail.Load(PropertySet(BasePropertySet.IdOnly, EmailMessageSchema.IsRead));
//if (!mail.IsRead) // check that you don't update and create unneeded traffic
//{
// mail.IsRead = true; // mark as read
// mail.Update(ConflictResolutionMode.AutoResolve); // persist changes
//}
// As a best practice, limit the properties returned to only those that are required.
PropertySet propSet = new PropertySet(BasePropertySet.IdOnly, ItemSchema.Subject);
// Bind to the existing item by using the ItemId.
// This method call results in a GetItem call to EWS.
Item item = Item.Bind(service, itemId, propSet);
EmailMessage mail = Item.Bind(service, itemId, propSet);
item.Load(new PropertySet(BasePropertySet.IdOnly,EmailMessageSchema.IsRead));
item.IsRead = true;
item.Update(ConflictResolutionMode.AlwaysOverwrite);
return true;
}
I am trying to do something like this:
// if the property is not loaded yet, first load it
mail.Load(PropertySet(BasePropertySet.IdOnly, EmailMessageSchema.IsRead));
if (!mail.IsRead) // check that you don't update and create unneeded traffic
{
mail.IsRead = true; // mark as read
mail.Update(ConflictResolutionMode.AutoResolve); // persist changes
}
unfortunately I need to be able to get a unique email message from the item.
how can I do that please?

Philip-
You can add EmailMessageSchema.IsRead to your property set, so that you can get it in your Bind call, and then you don't have to call Load at all.
PropertySet propSet = new PropertySet(BasePropertySet.IdOnly,
ItemSchema.Subject, EmailMessageSchema.IsRead);
The EmailClass derives from the Item class, so Bind works on both. So you can do the following:
EmailMessage mail = EmailMessage.Bind(service, itemId, propSet);
Put that together and you've got this:
PropertySet propSet = new PropertySet(BasePropertySet.IdOnly, ItemSchema.Subject, EmailMessageSchema.IsRead);
EmailMessage mail = EmailMessage.Bind(service, itemId, propSet);
if (!mail.IsRead) // check that you don't update and create unneeded traffic
{
mail.IsRead = true; // mark as read
mail.Update(ConflictResolutionMode.AutoResolve); // persist changes
}

Philip,
When testing my code I added just a little bit to the Item.Bind() from your code to make this work:
EmailMessage mail = Item.Bind(service, itemId, propSet) as EmailMessage;
The as EmailMessage will cast it to the appropriate type for you. After that I was able to see the isRead property.
I hope this helps. If this does resolve your problem, please mark the post as answered.
Thanks,
--- Bob ---

Implementing Outlook 2010's group by conversation using EWS and Exchange 2007

We're using EWS to generate some analytics on some of our mailboxes.
Part of this is getting a count/name/start/end of conversations. A conversation being analogous to the way Outlook 2010 shows them when grouping by conversation.
I was hoping to be able to use the ConversationId to group items, but that seems to be an Exchange 2010-only feature.
I can group by subject within a folder to get a simple idea of threads... however this does not handle split conversations, as Outlook 2010 does - specifically, it doesn't handle bringing in the replies that are in the sent items (these are important to us - we can't get good metrics without also looking at replies).
My current code for getting thread info looks like this:
private IEnumerable<EmailThread> GetThreads(Folder folder)
{
var view = new ItemView(int.MaxValue) {PropertySet = new PropertySet(BasePropertySet.IdOnly)};
// view.PropertySet.Add(ItemSchema.ConversationId); - Can't use this as we're stuck on Exchange 2007 !!!
view.PropertySet.Add(ItemSchema.Subject);
view.PropertySet.Add(ItemSchema.DateTimeReceived);
var grouping = new Grouping(ItemSchema.Subject, SortDirection.Descending, ItemSchema.DateTimeReceived, AggregateType.Maximum);
var groupResults = folder.FindItems(view, grouping);
return groupResults.Select(x => new EmailThread
{
Name = x.Items.First().Subject,
Items = x.Items.Count,
StartDate = x.Items.Last().DateTimeReceived, // Assume last in thread is first email
EndDate = x.Items.First().DateTimeReceived // Assume first in thread is most recent
});
}
I am hoping someone knows of a neat way to efficiently get information on replies that constitute part of a conversation?

You can fetch the ConversationId and the ConversationIndex via extended properties:
private static readonly ExtendedPropertyDefinition ConversationIdProperty = new ExtendedPropertyDefinition(0x3013, MapiPropertyType.Binary);
private static readonly ExtendedPropertyDefinition ConversationIndexProperty = new ExtendedPropertyDefinition(0x0071, MapiPropertyType.Binary);
var items = service.FindItems(WellKnownFolderName.Inbox, new ItemView(512) { PropertySet = new PropertySet(BasePropertySet.FirstClassProperties,
ConversationIdProperty, ConversationIndexProperty)});
Both are binary properties. Their content is described in great detail here:
[MS-OXOMSG]: E-Mail Object Protocol Specification, section 2.2.1.2 and 2.2.1.3.
The properties themselves are defined in [MS-OXPROPS]: Exchange Server Protocols Master Property List.