Entourage and Exchange 2007 - Part 1 of 2

I've seen lots of posts about people having problems with Entourage not talking to Exchange 2007 via OWA (Outlook Web Access) but I haven't yet found a straight answer on how to get it working. I've just spent two day banging my head against this problem and thought I'd share.

I'll cover how I resolved the issue in two parts. The first part examines the relevant configuration for for the Client Access Service (CAS) role in your Exchange 2007 infrastructure. If you haven't got this configured yet then I've linked to a couple of articles at the bottom of this post.

The second part will look at the client side stuff. There isn't much to it and if your impatient then the quick answer is you need Entourage 2008 with the Entourage 2008 Web Services Edition add-on/upgrade.

CAS Server Role Configuration
Let's start with the server side first. We're only interested in the Client Access Service. Hopefully you have this installed on a separate box to your mailbox role, unless your running Small Business Server that is. There isn't much to it to be fair. As long as you follow any of the extremely good guides out there you should be fine. The key configuration is to get the correct authentication methods on the legacy OWA virtual directories. The three directories in question are:

• Exchange
• Exchweb
• Public

Where as you would use forms based authenticated for the main OWA directory you want Basic and Integrated for these directories. You get to those settings in the Exchange Management Console by browsing to following in the left hand pane.

Microsoft Exchange
-> Server Configuration
-> Client Access

The select your CAS server in the upper-right hand pane and you will see a list of Outlook Web Access directories in the lower-right hand pane. For each of the above three entries do the following.

1. Right button click and select Properties
2. Click on the Authentication tab
3. Select the following options and clear all others

• User one or more standard authentication methods:
• Integrated Windows authentication
• Basic authentication (password is sent in clear text)

You will then need to restart the IIS service. This can be done from the command shell using 'iisreset /noforce'.

For more information on configuring Exchange 2007 here are some excellent articles I used.

Part 1: The Exchange 2007 Client Access Server (CAS) role
Exchange 2007 Autodiscover and certificates

I do have more somewhere but not to hand. I'll see if I can dig them out.

Hopefully that has pointed you in the right direction for the server side configuration. Next time we'll look at the client side.

Si.