Exchange 2013 Inbound Proxy Probe Emails at the Moderator

Exchange 2013 Managed Availability probes the Exchange health status using auto-generated emails. Some of these may end up caught at the IMF Tune Moderator. With many such emails littering the moderation interface, this may become a nuisance.

Managed Availability Emails

In general we see three types of Managed Availability auto-generated emails. These have subjects of the type:
<GUID>-MapiSubmitLAMProbe
Client submission probe
Inbound proxy probe

Normally IMF Tune leaves the <GUID>-MapiSubmitLAMProbe and Client submission probe emails unprocessed, keeping them out of sight. However the Inbound proxy probe emails are often assigned SCL7 and caught as spam.

Why is Inbound Proxy Probe Different?

Why doesn't IMF Tune just leave the Inbound proxy probe emails unprocessed like the others? This is a good question. The decision of what gets processed is not taken by IMF Tune. Instead we leave this up to the MS Exchange Content Filter agent. We follow the "Microsoft knows best" rule here.

The SCL rating assigned to these emails comes from the MS Content Filter itself. Even if IMF Tune was not installed these emails would still get this rating. We don't know why it gets rated SCL7. What we do know, is that SCL 7 is usually assigned to emails that are very likely to be spam. Thus most users employing the IMF Tune Moderator with Exchange 2013 end up seeing such auto-generated emails.

Dealing with Inbound Proxy Probe Emails

When working with the IMF Tune Moderator we can do one of two things to get rid of the proxy probe emails. We either manually delete them or we configure an IMF Tune rule so that these are no longer classified as spam.

If you want to delete these emails manually, the quickest approach is to filter all emails by subject. At the moderator click on Filter e-mails...

At the Filter by drop-down list select Subject and at the Filter Text field enter inbound proxy probe. This will hide all other emails allowing us to select all and delete the emails.

Next we can setup an Advanced SCL Rule that lowers the SCL rating such that these are no longer rated as spam. Here is how to setup a rule that tests the email sender and subject:

1. At the IMF Tune configuration select SCL Rules | Advanced SCL Rules. Select 'Apply advanced SCL Rules' to enable the list and click Add to create a new rule.

   

2. At the first page, name the rule and click Next to move to the Conditions list. Here select the condition 'Received from addresses or domains'. Click the addresses or domains link and enter the sender address inboundproxy@contoso.com.

   

3. Next select the 'Subject contains words' condition. Click the words link and enter the subject text Inbound proxy probe.

   

4. Click Next to move to the Action selection step. Select 'Decrement Spam Confidence Level (SCL) by value', click the value link and set the decrement to 9 to push down the SCL rating to zero.

   

5. Complete the Rule Wizard without selecting any exceptions and save changes.

New Inbound proxy probe emails will now end up with an SCL 0 and won't mix with spam any longer.