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Is Autodiscover mandatory

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jcrapps

jcrapps

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Hi, this may be a really stupid question, but is it absolutely necessary to use autodiscover? I have a test envorinment where all the services I want to use work (OWA, MAPI, POP). I know that autodiscover makes things easier. What are the cons as far as functionality? Will it be as functional as an exchange 2003 server?
 
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It will be far more functional than 2003. Autodiscover is part of 2007, and it's installed and configured by default. You don't have to create the DNS records if you don't want to. But it does make auto-configuration of Outlook work.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference
 
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It will function normally without autodiscover but you'll need to set up Outlook yourself.
 
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Since all client will be not be domain connected, I'll have to add a dns record to allow autodiscover right? The only problems that I'm having from the autodiscover not being set up correctly is a error message in Outlook saying that I can't access the Offline Address Book. Is there a way to get rid of this message? Every time I hit send/receive, it doesn't complete. It his 97% and then gets an error. But sending and receiving do work though.
 
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I found the solution. I had to disable Cached Exchange Mode in Outlook 2007 and it stopped trying to access OAB information.
 
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That's a horrible remedy to that issue. You just essentially told your Exchange server to do a lot more work with a lot more traffic going to it. And you now have no access to email when the connection to the Exchange server i

The OAB hasn't a thing to do with Autodiscover.

All you have to do is configure the OAB URL so that it matches what's in your SSL certificate.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference
 
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Patrick I have tried that. I went to Server Configuration -> Client Access -> OAB tab and changed the external and internal URL to the same name that's on the certificate and I still get the error message. I was under the impression that autodiscover had to be set up.
 
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Can't you just add a single A-record for autodiscover to your test environment's DNS? Autodiscover is simpler to set up than a lot of things... AFAIK, Outlook 2007 DOES need Autodiscover for OAB to work properly...

Dave Shackelford
Shackelford Consulting
 
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There's a few places where you have to define URLs that need to match your SSL cert, including

Autodiscover
Code: 
Get-ClientAccessServer | fl
and save the info to a text file
Code: 
Set-ClientAccessServer -Identity [COLOR=red]e2k7-cas-01[/color] -AutodiscoverServiceInternalUri https://[COLOR=red]autodiscover.contoso.com[/color]/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml

Exchange EWS
Code: 
Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory | fl
and save the info to a text file
Code: 
Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity "[COLOR=red]e2k7-cas-01[/color]\EWS (Default Web Site)" -InternalUrl https://[COLOR=red]autodiscover.contoso.com[/color]/ews/exchange.asmx -ExternalUrl https://[COLOR=red]autodiscover.contoso.com[/color]/ews/exchange.asmx

Offline Address Book
Code: 
Get-OABVirtualDirectory | fl
and save the info to a text file
Code: 
Set-OABVirtualDirectory -Identity "[COLOR=red]e2k7-cas-01[/color]\oab (Default Web Site)" -InternalUrl https://[COLOR=red]autodiscover.contoso.com[/color]/oab -ExternalUrl https://[COLOR=red]autodiscover.contoso.com[/color]/oab

Unified Messaging
Code: 
Get-UMVirtualDirectory | fl
and save the info to a text file
Code: 
Set-UMVirtualDirectory -Identity "[COLOR=red]e2k7-cas-01[/color]\unifiedmessaging (Default Web Site)" -InternalUrl https://[COLOR=red]autodiscover.contoso.com[/color]/unifiedmessaging/service.asmx -ExternalUrl https://[COLOR=red]autodiscover.contoso.com[/color]/unifiedmessaging/service.asmx

In these examples, e2k7-cas-01 is the name of the server, and autodiscover.contoso.com is the domain name that is listed on the SSL cert. Some may use mail.contoso.com, some may use webmail.contoso.com. Whatever. YMMV


Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference
 
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Whoops - two things. My earlier info
Pat said:
That's a horrible remedy to that issue. You just essentially told your Exchange server to do a lot more work with a lot more traffic going to it. And you now have no access to email when the connection to the Exchange server i
Click to expand...

Got truncated. It should say "is lost" at the end.

Next, in my code examples above, watch for word wrap - those are all single line entries.

Pat Richard
Microsoft Exchange MVP
Contributing author Microsoft Exchange Server 2007: The Complete Reference
 
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Sniper, thank you for the detailed instructions. I'm having a problem trying to test autodiscover on my test environment.

Here is a quick rundown of my setup:
The exchange server's AD domain is us.domain1.com
The test host name is test.domain2.com
Autodiscover is set to autodiscover.domain2.com and points to the IP address for the exchange server.
test.domain2.com is set to accept mail from @custom.domain2.com.
This starts to get confusing for me because there are so many variables involved. I set up custom.domain2.com to be another accepted domain ontop of us.domain1.com. My exchange server accepts mail fine from mail sent to @custom.domain2.com addresses and also sends them out fine. But autodiscover falls flat on its face.

I know that when I type in my e-mail address for the Autodiscover test, I type in user@custom.domain2.com. Then autodiscover will look for:
custom.domain2.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
autodiscover.domain2.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml.
Of course neither of these exist since my autodiscover A record is autodiscover.domain2.com.
Any idea how I can get this to work in my testing environment?
 
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Thank you ShackDaddy for the cool website. I'm actually working on two Exhange Servers and I'm having better luck with this other one. OK, so here's the deal with this one. I ran the test that ShackDaddy posted. ALL SUCCESSFUL. I ran the exchange autodiscovery test. Pulls the xml info no problem. I'm able to view the xml info for /ews/exchange.asmx, oab.xml. Buuut, I get that pesky error in exchange
Not downloading Offline address book files. A server (URL) could not be located.
Also, OOF doesn't work either saying exchange cannot be reached blah blah.

So i run EMS and get this output for Test-OutlookWebServices.

Id : 1003
Type : Information
Message : About to test AutoDiscover with the e-mail address Administrator@company.com.

Id : 1007
Type : Information
Message : Testing server exchsvr.DOMAIN with the published name company.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx &
Id : 1019
Type : Information
Message : Found a valid AutoDiscover service connection point. The AutoDiscover
URL on this object is r/autodiscover.xml.

Id : 1006
Type : Information
Message : The Autodiscover service was contacted at
Id : 1016
Type : Success
Message : [EXCH]-Successfully contacted the AS service at The elapsed time was 171 millisecond
s.

Id : 1015
Type : Success
Message : [EXCH]-Successfully contacted the OAB service at The elapsed time was 0 milliseconds
.

Id : 1014
Type : Success
Message : [EXCH]-Successfully contacted the UM service at The elapsed time was 187
milliseconds.

Id : 1016
Type : Success
Message : [EXPR]-Successfully contacted the AS service at The elapsed time was 31 milliseconds
.

Id : 1015
Type : Success
Message : [EXPR]-Successfully contacted the OAB service at The elapsed time was 0 milliseconds
.

Id : 1014
Type : Success
Message : [EXPR]-Successfully contacted the UM service at The elapsed time was 125
milliseconds.

Id : 1017
Type : Success
Message : [EXPR]-Successfully contacted the RPC/HTTP service at The elapsed time was 31 milliseconds.

Id : 1006
Type : Success
Message : The Autodiscover service was tested successfully.

It looks good to me. Where else can I search?
 
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Another interesting thing I found. I have to give my username and password when I start Outlook 2007. When I run the autoconfigure test in Exchange, I have to enter that information again. A window pops up asking for username and password, which I enter DOMAIN/uname and password. In the tutorials that I have read about, I never saw the instrutions to have to enter my credentials again. Is this a permissions issue, or it normal to give my credentials again for the test?
 
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Hmm, it didn't seem to work for me. When I change it to accept for all the certificates in IIS, autodiscover doesn't work and it disconnects Outlook. Thanks though.
 
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OK, It's now worse than I thought. I ran the test website that ShackDaddy gave me and all was well but this error:

Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 Autodiscover Connectivity Test
Attempting to ping RPC Endpoint 6002 (Referral Service) on server exchsvr.DOMAIN
Failed to ping Endpoint

The reason why I didn't get this earlier is because I was VPN'ed into the network and I didn't realize that's why it was working. Now that I'm not vpn'ed in, RPC over HTTPS doesn't seem to be working.
 
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