Can I mix echange 5.5 and webmail for the same domain? 1

[SimonDavis]

Fuzzy question of the week here . . .

We have a 5.5 box with a bunch of users, that works fine for what we need. We have OWA, again perfectly adequate.

But (and here's where I'm fuzzy) - if we have a couple of users who spend most of their time out of the office, and have Blackberrys, is it possible to have a few entirely webmail based mailboxes?

I understand we can use BES, but that costs several thousand bucks, and for 2 people is rather heavy - it would also need its own server.

The Blackberrys can be easily set up to work with webmail based email - it is transparent to the user and his recipients.

Question is, can I 'hive off' a couple of mailboxes from our domain?

Just for a complete picture, our domain mails are passed via a seperate SMTP (IIS 5) server. That may or may not make things easier.

Not sure if this is even comprehensible, but thought I'd try . . . thanks.

 

[Zelandakh]

Leave Exchange as Exchange. Set up the Blackberry NOT on a BES.
Set up the Blackberry on the providers site as JoeBloggs@verizon.com. Test the BB sends out and receives.
Set up the Blackberry on the providers site with outbound email address of JoeBloggs@yourdomain.com. test the BB sends out with the new address.
Create a contact in AD/NT for JoeBloggs@verizon.com.
In the mailbox properties for Joe Bloggs in AD/NT, have it delivered to both the mailbox and the new contact.

Connect the device to the PC using desktop mangler.
go to the Address Book in Outlook, highlight everyone in the GAL and choose add to contacts.
Confirm all GAL entries are now in his Outlook/Contacts.
Sync Outlook contacts to the BB.
Disconnect the BB.

He can now use the BB as if it was on BES.

This works very well.

 

[Zelandakh]

Ooh, a star. Thanks