Predicted Actions Enabled

INTRODUCTION
As Administrators we are very much aware of every user friendly mailbox policies and features that might help the everyday user in your organizations. I would like to touch upon a topic which might not be that very important and useful from an administrative point of view but is something that most of the Microsoft office administrators may be familiar with. It’s not a widely used feature but is very much similar to Adaptive menus in legacy MS Office applications like Word and Excel.

What is it all about?
Here, we are speaking about an OWA MAILBOX POLICY that is by default disabled for all Outlook Web App (OWA) users and can be enabled by Exchange administrators. PredictedActionsEnabled is an Outlook Web App Feature that helps an Outlook Web App user customize the commands and icons they see according to what they are doing. This is a very complex approach that is appreciated by users who have a regular pattern of use, but can be disliked by users who do not want their menus or available buttons to be constantly changing. This feature is NOT a user-controlled. Even then we do not know much about the PredictedActionsEnabled feature as it’s not widely in use by users in OWA, so if it’s beneficial or a pain is yet to be identified. We aren’t even sure if users are aware that they have such a feature available to be explored.

Setting values for this Policy:
As administrators are aware, there are many OWA mailbox policies which are only available through Exchange Management Shell (EWS). PredictedActionsEnabled is one of them.

To check if it’s there in your environment try this cmdlet

 Get-OWAMailboxPolicy XXX |fl

This is what you’ll probably see…
 

RecoverDeletedItemsEnabled                          : True
                      InstantMessagingEnabled                             : True
                      TextMessagingEnabled                                : True
                      ForceSaveAttachmentFilteringEnabled                 : False
                      SilverlightEnabled                                  : True
                      InstantMessagingType                                : None
                      DisplayPhotosEnabled                                : True
                      SetPhotoEnabled                                     : True
                      AllowOfflineOn                                      : AllComputers
                      SetPhotoURL                                         : 
                      PlacesEnabled                                       : False
                      AllowCopyContactsToDeviceAddressBook                : True
                      PredictedActionsEnabled                             : False
                      UserDiagnosticEnabled                               : False
                      FacebookEnabled                                     : True
                      LinkedInEnabled                                     : True
                      WacExternalServicesEnabled                          : True
                      WacOMEXEnabled                                      : False
                      ReportJunkEmailEnabled                              : False
                      WebPartsFrameOptionsType                            : SameOrigin
                      AdminDisplayName                                    : 
                      ExchangeVersion                                     : 0.10 (14.0.100.0)
                      Name                                                : Enterprise
                      DistinguishedName                                   : CN=Enterprise,CN=OWA Mailbox Policies,CN=ENTERPRISE,CN=Microsoft 

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Although, this feature has a “FALSE” Value by default, it can be set to “TRUE” by using a simple power shell cmdlet.
Set-CASMailbox -Identity Default -OWAMailbox policy -PredictedActionsEnabled $true
 
Now to the icing on the cake:
Thanks for reading the article but the bad news is, that this feature/parameter currently can’t be changed in EXCHANGE 2013. Feedback has been sent to Exchange product/testing team (Confirmed by Microsoft Contingent Staff).
 
Closing comments:
Hopefully in your environment (apart from EXC 2013) you can try and use these feature and come up with questions and suggestions.