Chop Shop

I have seen several broken instances of autodiscover and other Exchange 2007 web services.

Generally fixing these involves…

• Verifying internal and external DNS matches (for a single server setup)
  • autodiscover.domain.com -> cname to mail.domain.com
  • mail.domain.com -> points to actual exchange server
  • Make sure this matches on the outside to make things smooth -> external dns should point to those public IPs used for publishing http/https to the CAS
  • I have seen people set up confusing and improper firewall and public DNS entries that cause havoc and are hard to track down initially! Pay attention when publishing your mail server and editing public DNS. A fix for a mistake can take hours to propagate in public DNS!
  • Verify certificate names
    • **A UCC is needed (godaddy.com has cheap ones)…follow the installation instructions – or check my blog for an earlier article about this.**
      • Correction ** a UCC is not needed ** a colleague (thanks Rob!) tipped me off about this – http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2007/09/21/447067.aspx
    • If you didn’t install it and question if it was done right, just reinstall it – usually is faster anyway.
    • Rebuilding virtual directories my do it…
      • Most can be done with remove-…virtualdirectory (like remove-oabvirtualdirectory)
      • Check this article for a great overview -
        • http://www.exchange-genie.com/2007/07/exchange-2007-autodiscover-service-part-1/
• I have seen that you should stop IIS before running the new-…virtualdirectory commands…restart IIS after the new VD is created successfully.
• For a missing OAB the web distribution point…
  • http://blogs.msdn.com/dgoldman/archive/2006/11/27/Error-0×80190194-when-using-an-outlook-2007-client-to-download-a-web-distribution-enabled-oab.aspx
  • When in doubt, test it out
    • GREAT testing site for Outlook web services and Exchange services
      • https://www.testexchangeconnectivity.com/
• Test with outlook client
  • OAB – tools -> send/receive -> download address book -> hit OK.
  • OOF – tools -> out of office assistant (will bomb out if not working, otherwise will show up nicely!)
  • Free/busy – attempt to schedule a meeting and using the schedule assistant
  • Change to folder view and view the Sync Issues container for any other problem hints
• With outlook open, hold ctrl and right-click the tray icon for it. Try out connection status (should have directory & mail service connections via TCP (LAN/VPN) or HTTP(S) (outlook anywhere)) and the test autoconfiguration.
• test-outlookwebservices
  • I have seen 401 unauthorized errors before, but have had the autodiscover working despite these.
  • Note that autodiscover.xml is a placeholder file (there isn’t actually anything in it!)
  • If you are running Exchange 2007 on Windows 2008…you may want to disable IPv6…but do it RIGHT – don’t just uncheck the box in network control panel and call it good – RTFM
    • http://support.microsoft.com/kb/929852