Thursday, October 28, 2004

Outlook Mobile Access acting up?

Outlook Mobile Access is pretty cool, you have to admit. Checking your email, calendar or contacts on your phone over the air? that's awesome. I'd have to say my favourite part is not having to re-enter all your contacts on the phone, followed closely by being able to know what your calendar is. Of course E-mail is fun, but I'm not sure I'm *that* important. :)

However, Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) doesn't have a lot of the same functionality as Outlook Web Access (OWA) around mailbox creation & mailbox lookup. Here are some tricks that I've picked up along the way.

  • If you add additional e-mail addresses to users and additional domains, OMA can get confused as to how to find your mailbox. Force OMA to look up which mailbox to check by making it always check the .local domain email address. Set the value in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\MasSync\Parameters\ create a string value called SMTPProxy and make it the value of your internal domain, internaldomain.local . This will help the mailbox lookup process

  • Another trick is to ensure that you're checking the correct domain in the virtual directory:

    • Open Server Management, expand Advanced Management, Internet Information Services, {servername}, Web sites, and Default Website

    • Right-click on exchange-oma and choose Properties

    • On the Virtual Directory tab, in the Local Path it should read a string like \\.\BackOfficeStorage\{Internaldomain}.local\MBX. Delete the internal domain and put in the external domain.

    • Open a command prompt and do an iisreset

  • Changing your server IP Address. Tisk tisk if you just jump into the local network card properties and change the IP address. Use the Change IP Tool!!! Using this tool changes more than just your IP address to keep your internal network functioning. One of the things it does is change the IP restrictions on the \exchange-oma directory

Those are my tricks if you can't get it working. Of course they are work arounds to things you might have changed from the out of the box scenario, but hey, it's all about customization right?

8 comments:

Stefan Visagie said...

Hi Sean,

I'm from South Africa and one of the local IT companies here made the mistake of making their local domain the same as their internet domain name. They are running into a host of DNS problems and resolutions conflicts. Do you know of a way to change their local domain?

Kind regards
Stefan Visagie

Sean Daniel said...

Ouch, I'm afraid I have bad news here. I've spoken to a few folks on our setup and networking teams and this is one of the unfortunate things that can happen during setup. Unfortunately there is no way to fix this beyond flattening the box and re-installing. Have you considered doing a migration?

You could even consider backing up and restoring the data stores for CompanyWeb, Exchange, and the file system.

I'm sorry that I don't have a better answer for you.

OrcusOmega said...

I have an SBS R2 with multiple domains configured uising your recommendations from your blog. This is great for family email hosting, but OMA does not let anyone other than the default domain check their mail. Any way to get around this?

Sean Daniel said...

What error messages are you receiving? I do this at my house and never log in with someone on the primary domain name

OrcusOmega said...

Well, I don't see any messages in the Event Viewer (Applications) and nothing in MobileAdmin either (although that is probably a different issue, one I can fight with later). I do get an error message on the phone "0x85010014", and when I use that user to log into OMA directly, I get:

"Your account is not configured for wireless access. Please contact your administrator."

If I change the primary email account to be in the primary domain, and leave all other settings on the smartphone alone, it works (go figure). I added the SMTPProxy reg setting from below, and followed your blog instructions on how to enable alternate domains in Exchange on SBS 2003 R2.

I am starting a consulting company out of my home, and would like to be able to have a dedicated device for all my field work (as well as for expense purposes). I am bringing on a partner, and I want for him to be able to have an account on this box as well. Any help is very much appreciated!

Thanks,

Bob

Sean Daniel said...

Bob, can you check your IIS logs to see who your device is logging in as. There are some rare cases when the device authenticates it tries to use some weird username.

Nico said...

Hi, i'am from Argentina, I need to change the IP of my SBS 2003 but the "Change IP Tool" dosn't work, can you tell me what's the msc to run the application? or what can i do to change the ip without this tool?

Thanks in advance

Nicolas

Sean Daniel said...

The ChangeIP tool is the best way to do this, although you can also try the Configure Email and Internet Connection Wizard