Exchange Online
Mail flow, migrations, mailbox administration and transport rules. Infrastructure people rely on every day.
Operations meets
automation.
I keep platforms running.
And build the automation that makes it sustainable.
OBERIBERG ↔ ZURICHChristian Schönbächler
01Understand systems↗02Control change↗03Verify results↗
01 / OPERATIONS
Complex systems.
Clear responsibility.
Exchange Online and Microsoft Teams, at the same company since 2006. Alongside that: PowerShell, Python and agent systems that do the work.
Microsoft Teams
Governance, administration and lifecycle. Collaboration needs a platform that is actively managed.
Microsoft Graph
API-driven reporting, bulk changes and automation. Building beyond what the interface provides.
SYSTEM STUDY
Understand connections. Identify dependencies. Keep production systems stable.
Turn recurring work into controlled processes. With explicit boundaries and ways back.
Cross-check results. State assumptions. Make the evidence visible.
Schematic visualisation · interactive
FIVE SERVER GENERATIONS. ONE CONTINUOUS PATH.
20072010201320162019Exchange Online
Certified for Exchange 2007 through 2019. The certifications have expired; the experience spans on-premises operations through Exchange Online.
02 / AUTOMATION IN PRACTICE
Astaro → FortiProxy
Twenty systems.
One technology change.
A proxy rule set built up over years. Two products that express the same intent differently. A narrow time window.
This is where a language model became
a tool for real work.
I have worked with it daily ever since. Most of the work is checking whether the answer is actually correct.
20SYSTEMS
A migration from my own practice
Check statically
Diff against the old configuration. If a change cannot be explained, it does not go into production.
Start small
Pilot the first systems. Adjust before rolling out to the rest.
Verify in production
Analyse the logs. Real traffic reveals what a rule set actually does.
03 / WORKSHOP
What building
teaches you.
Four observations from working with agent systems. Each one changed how I work.
01Levels of evidence, not one number
Documented, reconstructed, recurring, estimated: these levels stay separate. Certainty and guesswork must not look identical.
02The empty text layer
A PDF with text in the Private Use Area returns blank space on extraction. The search finds nothing and still looks correct. Checking the source file matters.
03A lock that is not one
My write-access check reserves nothing, holds for an instant and does not catch every case. Those limits are explicitly documented.
04The second engine
A different model reviews the first one's work: read-only, with sensitive areas locked out. It found four real errors on its first run.
04 / NOTES
4 SEPTEMBER 2026 · AGENT SYSTEMS
Dream: From enterprise feature to a memory workflow of my own
What agent systems should remember. What they need to unlearn. And why a human makes the decision in between.
Read the article05 / EXPERIENCE
Experience comes
from doing.
20YEARS · ONE COMPANY
Senior Systems Engineer
Swiss IT service provider, Zurich area. Microsoft ecosystem, focused on Exchange Online and Teams.
Business informatics
Federal Diploma of Higher Education in Business Informatics, earned alongside full-time work.
The networking foundation
Sihl + Eika Papier AG. Cisco CCNA and CCNP alongside it – the foundation for later technology changes.
From studying to building
Matura, then two years at the University of Zurich. Left because I wanted to build things.