Exchange 2007 - OWA

WOW! You should see OWA on Exchange 2007.

• Auto fill of the names of punters from the GAL
• Auto fill of resources
• Calendar overlays for multiple users
• New mail now comes straight to Inbox, no pop ups or refresh requirements
• Absolute Outlook 2007 look and feel
• Direct access to documents on file shares and sharepoint portals
• Access to Public folders if they are in use
• Change password just works

Utterly stunning.

Ah. But there's a problem. A massive, massive problem. Someone "forgot" about non Internet Explorer support. They seem to call this experience "Outlook Web Access Light". Let's call it how it is - "Nothing like Outlook. Web Access 19th century".

The above list? Well, you might be able to change your password but given that all of the previous stuff doesn't work, I rather lost interest. Internet Explorer 5.2 on the Mac is OWA light only as it isn't Internet Explorer 6 or higher. Same with Firefox, Opera and Safari.

Yes, I'm talking about those shiny toys called Apple computers. There is no browser on the Mac that will do anything but OWA light. You can't cludge any of them to pretend to be IE6.

Looks like the double glazed windows are making the Apples go rotten, at least as far as email is concerned.

Exchange 2007 - OWA niggles

Ah there you petal. Pull up a seat and pay attention.

Exchange 2007, aka E12 or whatever else you want to call it, has a little thing called Outlook Web Access (hereafter referred to as OWA). Now your users have been enjoying it for years but do not understand what it does or how it works. From its earliest and let’s face it slightly clunky beginnings, it was located at http://YourMailServer.YourDomain.com/exchange

Well now they have moved it and you, as the wielder of the black magic that is Exchange, are faced with some choices.

1. Educate your users.
2. Redirect your users.

OK, kindly stop laughing at the back. Looks like that is a consensus then – let’s redirect. There are 3 potential places that they will try and I’ll cover each one separately.

http://YourMailServer.YourDomain.com
http://YourMailServer.YourDomain.com/exchange
https://YourMailServer.YourDomain.com/exchange

So the first one could be your Intranet, or unused, or the repository for your stash of pictures of Angelina Jolie or all three. The punters arrive, don’t get the logon screen and assume email is broken.
The second one is almost excusable as it is the non secured version of OWA until and including Exchange 2003. Falls into the same bracket as the last one.

Either of the last two will give them a legacy (think Windows 2000) non forms based authentication screen and assuming they know their credentials will then give them a 404 page cannot be found error by default. Obviously this is not clever and they will then contact you which could be the middle of the night. So let’s get round it. If they hit the wrong place for the right reason, let’s push them to the right place.

So take yourself into Notepad and paste this little lot

(html)
(head)
(title)
This is an old link but you will be redirected to the new site after 2 seconds
(/title)
(meta http-equiv="refresh" content="2; URL=https://YourMailServer.YourDomain.com/OWA")
(meta name="" content="automatic redirection to new site")
(/head)
(body)
If your browser does not automatically go there within a few seconds, please click (a href=" https://yourmailserver.yourdomain.com/OWA%22)here(/a) manually.
(/body)
(/html)


But change the ( to <>

Then save that as index.htm having changed the URLs in the above sample to match yours correctly (honestly, you’d be surprised - people just paste this stuff in and expect it to work). The /exchange virtual directory matches the /exchweb/bin/Auth/ folder in your Exchange tree in Explorer in case you do not wish to delve into IIS too heavily. Drop that little file into the relevant folders and Robert is most certainly your Mother’s Brother.