The Expert's Guide for

Exchange 2003
Preparing for, Moving to, and Supporting
Exchange Server 2003

by Steve Bryant
 vi

Books

Contents
Chapter 6 Deploying Microsoft Outlook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Outlook 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Cached mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Before Outlook 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Enter Outlook 2003 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Synchronization Timer and Priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Network Adaptor Speed Awareness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
MAPI Compression . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
OAB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
RPC-over-HTTP . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Outlook 2003: Additional Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
OWA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Launching OWA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
OWA Address Book Access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
OWA Network Performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
OMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Enabling OMA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
ActiveSync . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Reviewing the Improvements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Next: Administrative Best Practices and Disaster Recovery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
 103

Chapter 6:

Deploying Microsoft Outlook

By the end of this chapter, I think you’ll understand why the Microsoft Exchange client information
I discuss is essential to you. The Exchange client is, in fact, the most important aspect of Exchange.
I’ll discuss your several client options, including their different functionality and their impact on the
network. This information will help you determine how clients can connect from the Internet to
receive information, how many servers your organization requires, and how mobile access can work
most effectively.
In Outlook 2003, Microsoft has finally created an Outlook client that’s smart on the network. And
with the new methods you have for connection, end users have more options for getting to their
data. I’ll explore the strengths of the new Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 client, the new Outlook Web
Access (OWA) client, the Outlook Mobile Access (OMA) client, and ActiveSync.
I’ll also discuss the specific settings available for each Outlook client because those settings
affect the client’s performance, the network, and the organization’s security. Choosing to use remote
procedure call (RPC)-over-HTTP or to use premium rather than basic OWA will have implications for
security, network performance, and functionality that you should understand. One of the goals of this
chapter is to provide you with the information you need to determine the best configuration for your
Outlook clients and their connectivity to the Exchange server.

n Note I won’t discuss Outlook Express, POP, and IMAP because those access methods and protocols
haven’t changed much over the past 10 years.

Outlook 2003
Outlook 2003 is the newest version of Outlook. It’s available for the McIntosh and for i386 systems
running Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and Windows 2000. Outlook 2003 represents the largest
change to the code base and the most significant set of improvements since the first Exchange client.
(The first Exchange client was simply called “Exchange” – just as cc:Mail and MS Mail identified both
the client and server components.)
As companies continue to rely on messaging for communications, the Microsoft Office Product
Group and Microsoft Research teams spend considerable time trying to keep up with feature requests
and fine-tuning the interface so that menus become increasingly natural and even predictive.
Microsoft has improved existing features and introduced new looks, layouts, and advanced features.
The many added features are both reactive, such as the junk email filters, and user-requested, such as
office automation features (e.g., Smart Tags, SharePoint services integration).

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
104 The Expert’s Guide for Exchange 2003

Cached mode
Probably the most important change in Outlook will be invisible to most users. Outlook 2003’s
Cached mode option is intended to be seamless, simple, and invisible – and it meets those goals
completely. If you feel that this new function doesn’t apply to your organization and serve its needs,
you need to read this section thoroughly. Don’t tune out!
Cached mode dramatically affects not only the number of users your servers can support but also
the placement and configuration of your servers. Understanding this is important because of the
benefits and implications of its use. A brief history of Outlook will set this option in context.

Before Outlook 2003

Outlook 97 introduced the concept of offline mail storage. Don’t confuse offline mail storage with
personal folder store (PST) used as an offline folder store (OST). Microsoft designed offline mode
(Cached mode) to contain a copy of what was in a user’s mailbox on the Exchange server. End users
decided how much they wanted to “cache” locally in their OST file.
This approach to offline mail storage was a great improvement because it let users access
their contacts and even create email messages while they were on planes – or were otherwise
disconnected from the corporate network. The problem with Outlook 97 was that the offline file
wasn’t stable. Outlook 98 included some hotfixes that improved many areas of concern – among
them the stability of the offline store.
Although Outlook 2003 (XP) and Outlook 2000 further stabilized the OST, they suffered from
the offline/online problem (the Outlook client had to be in one state or the other). You could
synchronize with a server while you worked offline, but you couldn’t use features such as delegation
and Inbox rules. In addition, you had to restart Outlook to switch from one mode to another.
Even with this limitation, many companies began deploying Outlook clients configured for offline
use in remote locations. Users who worked offline gained a quick response by using a local cache of
the mailbox and a local copy of the Global Address List (GAL). A user in a remote office would
consume roughly the same bandwidth in either mode, but the offline client would respond faster and
network connectivity problems would affect it less than its online counterpart working from the same
location.
Even in previous versions of Outlook, the impact of offline use went beyond mobile users.
Desktop machines could access their mailboxes over a WAN link with surprising speed. In fact, the
only time users would notice the slow link would be during the mail synchronization – especially
when email messages with large attachments were involved.
Before Outlook 2003, remote synchronization monopolized not only the Outlook client, but also
the desktop itself, which might become unresponsive during the transfer. Moreover, as I mentioned
previously, working offline has some limitations. Users can’t access mail or public folders that aren’t
cached locally nor can they delegate tasks or work with rules.

Enter Outlook 2003

With Outlook 2003 and Cached mode, the client can switch between online and offline automatically
without announcing an error or disrupting the user. Imagine an office with perhaps 100 users, all
running Outlook 2003 in Cached mode. The users are working online when an administrator
accidentally reboots the Exchange Server. Bad news indeed, but not catastrophic because the Outlook
2003 client detects that the server isn’t available and automatically goes into offline mode.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
 Chapter 6 Deploying Microsoft Outlook 105

When the users create new email messages, Outlook 2003 automatically puts the email messages
into the Outbox without even hinting that a problem exists. A status bar in the lower right of the
Outlook client indicates that Outlook is “Disconnected” and trying to connect, as Figure 6.1 shows.

Figure 6.1
Outlook 2003 in Cached mode

By default, Outlook 2003 will notify the user of a status change through a dialog box and from
within the status bar itself. A “Disconnected,” “Connected,” or “Trying to Connect” indicator is
displayed automatically – depending on the current state of connectivity to the server. “Offline” is a
manual setting that you can select to prohibit the client from attempting a connection to the server.
Without the status bar’s indication, however, the user would have little way of knowing that
anything was amiss. When the server boots and the Exchange Services are running again, the client
automatically senses its return, switches to online mode, and synchronizes the deltas. Mobile users
experience a similar scenario when they launch Outlook. They needn’t worry about which mode to
choose or whether they’re connected to the network. The Outlook client handles the decisions.

Synchronization Timer and Priority

As Microsoft developed Office 2000, the company began working on the predictive functions by
which the menu systems learn how you work and offer the menu items that you use frequently first.
This predictive functionality has spilled over in subtle ways into other aspects of Office. Outlook 2003
synchronization is a case in point, as Figure 6.2 shows.

Figure 6.2
Predictive menus

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
106 The Expert’s Guide for Exchange 2003

Microsoft first introduced this approach to menus with Office 2000. It has now become standard
for Office and OS menu systems. Although this predictive menu system is rather primitive, it
represents one of the ways Microsoft’s software works to learn users’ habits.
Another predictive function of Outlook 2003 is its ability to automatically control the order in
which items are synchronized in Cached mode. When you launch Outlook 2003 for the first time in
Cached mode, Outlook begins to track which folders and types of items are most often synchronized.
As you continue to use Outlook 2003 in Cached mode, the system begins to learn which folders
you use most and prioritize those folders so that they are synchronized first. Eventually, the system is
trained – without user intervention. Outlook will always start by synchronizing the user’s most
frequently used folders and end by synchronizing the user’s least frequently used folders.
In addition to this intelligent prioritization process, Outlook determines the frequency of
replication based loosely upon the frequency at which an Outlook 2003 user creates new items in
the local cache. The idea is to try to batch the communication requests and synchronization tasks
whenever possible. In addition to item synchronization, various alerts are communicated between the
client and server (e.g., server alerts that tell the Outlook client newer items have arrived on the
server). To conserve bandwidth, these alerts are batched, which reduces the number of times the
server and client establish new communication channels.
The Outlook 2003 client working in Cached mode begins synchronization within 15 seconds
of your creating a new item (e.g., an email message). If you create another new item before the
15-second timer expires, the timer resets for another 15 seconds. The process will repeat until a
minute has elapsed – then all queued items will be synchronized in one batch. A similar process
occurs when the server receives new items and needs to send alerts to the client.

Network Adaptor Speed Awareness

Outlook 2000 could determine whether a server was available, but it could do so only at startup.
Outlook 2003’s ability to monitor connectivity continually is indeed a huge improvement, but the
ability to adjust functionality based on connectivity speed is something entirely new to Outlook.
Outlook can now change synchronization options based upon the speed of your network con-
nection. A remote worker who uses Outlook might synchronize it over a dial-up or slower WAN con-
nection. When Outlook determines that the local network connection is less than 128Kbps, it will
download headers only and skip updates to the Offline Address Book (OAB). A remote worker can
simply double-click the header (or synchronize with a PDA) to synchronize the message body and
attachment locally.

n Note You should understand that Outlook’s ability to detect network speed doesn’t determine the
connection speed of the session with the server but the identified connection speed of the
interface you use for the connection.

The Headers-only mode is especially handy for dial-up sessions and General Packet Radio Ser-
vice (GPRS) network connections. Because I travel a lot, I often use my smart phone to connect my
notebook computer to the Internet and synchronize Outlook. The Headers-only function is fast. But

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
 Chapter 6 Deploying Microsoft Outlook 107

better yet, Outlook 2003 synchronization now downloads the newest items first, so you have the
most relevant information immediately. (This approach is also new in Outlook 2003. Previous Out-
look versions would synchronize the oldest items first, so you had the wait the longest for newer
items.)

MAPI Compression
My first comment about Messaging API (MAPI) compression is – it’s about time! Microsoft has
extended the MAPI protocol to the Outlook 2003 client and to Exchange Server 2003 to support
EcDoRpcExt calls. Microsoft has used the Lempel-Ziv algorithm before – for Active Directory (AD)
replication – and has now implemented it in Outlook 2003 and Exchange Server 2003 to provide sur-
prising results.
To begin with, this compression feature applies not only to the attachments but also to the body
of the message itself – including HTML messages. In fact, HTML messages compress by 60 percent to
80 percent. For the most part, you should see a 20 percent to 40 percent savings in bandwidth when
you compress documents such as Word files and Visio files, as Figure 6.3 shows.

Figure 6.3
Outlook 2003 MAPI compression bandwidth savings

1KB HTML Message with 1MB Attachment

Outlook 2000

Outlook 2003
without cache

Outlook 2003
Cached Mode

0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200

Kbps

Outlook 2003 and the XPRESS compression technology offer substantial network and
performance savings over the previous versions of Outlook. Remember that you can obtain this
two-way compression only with Exchange 2003 Server and an Outlook 2003 client running on
Windows XP.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
108 The Expert’s Guide for Exchange 2003

You don’t need to choose a compression option or make any changes manually; the compres-
sion takes place seamlessly and the function is transparent to users. Each communication is more
efficient because MAPI compresses it during the session. If compression is particularly important to
you, consider the following two points:
HTML-formatted messages benefit from compression more than do Rich-Text Format (RTF)
messages. This change to HTML will reduce network bandwidth use if Outlook is heavily used and
most messages don’t have attachments. If your system meets those conditions and you need to
reduce traffic on your network, consider setting all of your Outlook clients to use HTML as the
standard email message format.
If most of your outbound email messages contain large files, consider disabling Cached mode
on your Outlook 2003 machines because items synchronized in the Sent Items folder receive no
synchronization advantage, as Figure 6.4 shows.

Figure 6.4
Outlook 2003 message-sending bandwidth use comparison

1KB HTML Message with 1MB Attachment

Outlook 2000

Outlook 2003
without cache

Outlook 2003
Cached Mode
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200 1400
Kbps

Outlook 2003 is extremely efficient for opening attachments and sending email messages.
However, when you use Outlook 2003 in Cached mode, it offers no real advantage for outbound
attachments – because of the way sent items are synchronized and because the entire item must be
sent to the server.

OAB
Cached mode offers more than just smart synchronization of the mailbox. It provides smart
synchronization of the OAB as well. In fact, turning on the cached mode automatically enables the
use of OABs. The ability to use OABs lets you resolve names locally if the Global Catalog (GC)
becomes unavailable during the Outlook session.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
 Chapter 6 Deploying Microsoft Outlook 109

Keep in mind that Outlook 2003 doesn’t offer any network improvements for GAL lookups. Tests
that Microsoft conducted and published indicate that Outlook 2003 consumes more bandwidth than
earlier versions of Outlook for address resolution, ambiguous name resolution, and address lookups,
as Figure 6.5 shows.

Figure 6.5
Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2000 bandwidth use comparison

Address Lookup

Outlook 2000
Ambiguous Name
Resolution Outlook 2003

Address
Resolution

0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10,000 12,000 14,000

bps

Outlook 2003 comes with many improvements and some of them are at the slight expense of the
network. In the case of the address book, Outlook 2003 can put as much as 12KB on the network
for an address lookup whereas Outlook 2000 uses less than 4KB for the same task. Although subse-
quent lookups are cached and faster, the initial unresolved names will require some bandwidth to
resolve. The Outlook 2003 machine used in the test was in Cached mode.

RPC-over-HTTP
If you can connect to your Exchange environment with OWA (I cover OWA in detail in an upcoming
section of this chapter), you can connect with an Outlook 2003 client using RPC-over-HTTP. That’s a
broad statement, but one that’s true most of the time.
As usual, however, the devil is in the details – and for RPC-over-HTTP, that’s particularly true. To
begin with, the Exchange Server 2003 machine that you use as the RPC-over-HTTP proxy server must
be running Windows Server 2003 and have the optional RPC Proxy Service installed.
A Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificate must be installed on the server, authentication for the
RPC Virtual Directory in Microsoft IIS must be set to Basic (with SSL), and Anonymous Access must
be cleared. If you use a front-end/back-end configuration in your Exchange environment, the RPC
Service should be installed on the front-end server(s). You can use the Exchange System Manager
(ESM – updated with Service Pack 1 – SP1) to specify the RPC-HTTP front-end server option. For the

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
110 The Expert’s Guide for Exchange 2003

mailbox servers, you need only specify that they’re RPC-HTTP back-end servers using the same ESM
console. Remember that you need to reboot to put these changes into effect.
For smaller shops that use a single server for Exchange and AD, you can install RPC-over-HTTP
as you would a front-end server by installing the RPC Proxy Service, installing a certificate, and
changing the authentication settings as noted previously. However, in ESM, you’ll need to select the
RPC-HTTP setting to specify that the server is a RPC-HTTP back-end server. In addition, you must
make a registry change to hard-code the port used for GC access.
To make the registry change, locate the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet
\Services\NTDS\ Parameters subkey and create a new multistring value named NSPI interface
protocol sequences. Edit the data field, adding ncacn_http:6004 to the value. You must restart the
machine for this setting to take effect.
Next, you must configure the Outlook 2003 client to use RPC-over-HTTP. The Outlook 2003
client does most of the work. It begins the process by encapsulating the MAPI calls into an HTTP
packet. SSL sessions are established between the client and the Exchange 2003 Server that runs the
RPC Proxy Service. The front-end server establishes a MAPI session to the mailbox server (or to itself
in the case of a single-server configuration) on behalf of the client.
To make this magic happen on the client side, you must be running Windows XP SP1 patched
with the RPC Update 331320 (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=16687) or Windows XP SP2.
Obviously, you must have Outlook 2003 installed and you must configure the Outlook profile to use
HTTP to communicate. Although you use few settings on the client (or on the server for that matter),
the settings must be exact and correct or connectivity will be impossible. Figure 6.6 shows the
necessary connectivity settings.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
 Chapter 6 Deploying Microsoft Outlook 111

Figure 6.6
Outlook 2003 communicates with Exchange over the Internet using RPC-over-HTTP

Keep in mind that for RPC-over-HTTP to work, the Outlook client must be able to resolve the
Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of the server. Moreover, the client machine must trust the
Certificate Authority (CA) that issued the server its SSL certificate.

n Note The RPC-over-HTTP function isn’t limited to synchronization but allows total mailbox and
public folder access from the Internet.
For more information about RPC-over-HTTP, see the following articles:
• http://www.winnetmag.com/article/articleid/40018/40018.html
• “Exchange Server 2003 RPC over HTTP Deployment Scenarios Guide” from
http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/library

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
112 The Expert’s Guide for Exchange 2003

Outlook 2003: Additional Improvements

Additional improvements to Outlook 2003 include buffer packing, Smart Change Synchronization, and
Incremental Change Synchronization. Microsoft added support for buffer packing to further aid in
replication and general efficiency. The buffer-packing function lets the server continue to load the
buffer with compressed data until it’s full. Buffer packing lets Outlook synchronize more data at once,
which results in fewer session requests because a single session can be leveraged to synchronize
multiple items.
Smart Change Synchronization reduces replication traffic by synchronizing message attributes
(e.g., flags, message forward, reply headers) instead of entire messages. Incremental Change
Synchronization lets Outlook track the synchronization and establish a checkpoint so that if a
connectivity error occurs during synchronization, Outlook won’t have to perform another complete
synchronization. Instead, the process will begin where the previous synchronization ended.

OWA
If you’ve paid attention to the evolution of OWA, you’ll notice specific changes – and not just in
OWA’s “look and feel.” With OWA 2003, the development effort came primarily from the Microsoft
Office team rather than from the Exchange team. Knowing that helps you understand why the OWA
and Outlook 2003 interfaces look so similar.
Moreover, you should know that the Office team is now in charge of Microsoft Office SharePoint
Portal Server. I wouldn’t be surprised if SharePoint Portal Server and OWA began to look more
similar. OWA has needed an overhaul, and recent changes affect not just appearance but core
structure as well.

Launching OWA
When you enable forms-based authentication on Exchange’s HTTP Virtual Server, you’ll have access
to the OWA logon page. The OWA logon page lets you launch OWA with several options that
determine the network performance of the client and the security options, as Figure 6.7 shows.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
 Chapter 6 Deploying Microsoft Outlook 113

Figure 6.7
OWA logon page

n Note
You’ll need to enable Forms-based Authentication to see this screen and select alternatives for
client interface and security options. Forms-based Authentication is much more secure because
it lets the administrator define timeout thresholds and better secure the session.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
114 The Expert’s Guide for Exchange 2003

After reading Microsoft’s 336-page document about Exchange 2003 client traffic and completing
my own testing, I don’t see a significant difference in bandwidth consumption between OWA basic
and OWA premium. Unless you have a compelling reason to use OWA basic, OWA premium should
probably be your OWA client of choice.

OWA Address Book Access

I’m among the many who’ve long assumed that HTML-based applications created less traffic on the
network than full clients. And if you read the descriptions of OWA premium versus OWA basic,
you’d think that OWA basic would have a smaller network footprint. For the different clients,
however, various functions simply work faster and more efficiently than others, as Figure 6.8 shows.

Figure 6.8
Network bandwidth use comparison by function

Address
Lookup

OWA 2003 Basic

Ambiguous OWA 2003 Premium
Name
Resolution Outlook 2003

Address
Resolution

0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000 18,000

Kbps

OWA Network Performance

To further prove my point about Outlook 2003’s efficiency, note that even without caching, the
Outlook client provides a considerably smaller footprint than its OWA counterpart using high
compression, as Figure 6.9 shows.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
 Chapter 6 Deploying Microsoft Outlook 115

Figure 6.9
OWA and Outlook 2003 sending and receiving bandwidth use comparison

1KB HTML Message with 1MB Attachment

Send

OWA Premium -
High Compression

Outlook 2003
without cache

Read

0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10,000 12,000 14,000 16,000

Kbps

Figure 6.9 compares the Outlook 2003 client without cache with OWA premium running SSL
with the high-compression option selected. As you can see, OWA takes almost twice the bandwidth
to send the same attachment.

OMA
During the past year, the wireless industry has improved its offerings, and organizations can now
offer wireless email, calendar, and address book services to PDAs – and even to phones. Microsoft
elected to roll its Microsoft Mobile Information Server (MMIS) into Exchange 2003. In addition, you
can now find technology that lets mobile users with Wireless Access Protocol (WAP) phones not only
read their email messages from a specially designed Web page, but also synchronize their Inbox and
calendar information over the air directly to your Exchange Server 2003 server.
If OWA is considered a thin client, OMA can be considered the thinnest client. OMA is a Web
interface that provides a simple yet navigable view of the user’s mailbox. OMA will display a different
screen depending on whether your device uses Wireless Markup Language (WML), HTML, Extensible
HTML (XHTML), or Compact HTML (cHTML) – but in all cases, OWA is extremely light on the wire
and can fit on even the smallest screens.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
116 The Expert’s Guide for Exchange 2003

Microsoft originally designed OMA for WAP devices. Nevertheless, you can leverage OMA from
non-WAP devices (e.g., remote machines) when network bandwidth is severely limited.

Enabling OMA
OMA isn’t enabled by default, but you can enable it for the entire Exchange organization by selecting
a single check box on the Mobile Services Properties dialog box in ESM, which Figure 6.10 shows.

Figure 6.10
OMA configuration

n Note In respect to OMA on the server, you need to configure very little. If you have an OWA
environment in place, you need only select one check box to enable OMA. However, make
sure you permit the OMA protocol for the mailboxes that will need it.

After you’ve enabled the setting, you just point your browser to https://fullyqualifiedname/oma to
start the session – assuming that you have connectivity and that an SSL certificate is installed on the
server. If you want to let non-WAP devices connect, you need to select Enabled unsupported devices
on the configuration screen that Figure 6.10 shows.
Although the interface seems bare, OMA offers some excellent features and support for mail
users. First, you can access the Inbox (and other mail folders), calendar, contacts, and tasks. Second,
you have access to the Global Address List (GAL) for creating email messages or looking up phone
numbers and other information.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
 Chapter 6 Deploying Microsoft Outlook 117

Third, in addition to the usual calendar, contacts, tasks, and message tasks, you can enable or
disable out-of-office notifications and change your language settings and time zone options, as you
can with OWA. If you’ve enabled the ability to change passwords from OWA, you can also use that
feature from within OMA.
Instead of showing what OMA looks like from a regular Internet Explorer (IE) session, Figure
6.11 shows what OMA looks like on a phone.

Figure 6.11
OMA on a Motorola MPX 200

You can navigate by using the number keys on the phone or by moving up and down by whatever
method your phone offers (mine has an arrow-like feature) to select the item you want.

ActiveSync
ActiveSync isn’t new. For years, you’ve been able to synchronize your Pocket PC device with your
desktop, including calendar items and messages. Although Palm users have used programs such as
Pocket Mirror to keep Outlook and the PDA synchronized, only ActiveSync allows direct synchroniza-
tion of the mailbox to the PDA without using a cradle or desktop synchronization software.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
118 The Expert’s Guide for Exchange 2003

This direct synchronization is accomplished through the server component of ActiveSync that
runs in IIS and supports synchronization with an HTTP Secure (HTTPS) session. In other words, a
client agent runs on Pocket PCs and smart phones and a server agent is loaded on either an MMIS or
an Exchange Server 2003 machine, as Figure 6.12 shows.

n Note The MMIS product has been discontinued. About 99 percent of the features have been rolled
into Exchange Server 2003. The primary item that didn’t carry over is support for Exchange 5.5
organizations. In other words, if you upgrade your Exchange 5.5 organizations to Exchange
Server 2003, you’ll still be in business.

Figure 6.12
Smart phone screen

The display screen on your Pocket PC or smart phone will vary depending on brand and OS
version, but in each case you’ll have a Pocket Outlook that contains your Inbox, calendar, and
contacts folder. ActiveSync can synchronize these functions with the cradle or through the wireless
network.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
 Chapter 6 Deploying Microsoft Outlook 119

ActiveSync is enabled by default on an Exchange Server 2003 machine, but getting it to work
could be a little tricky. You should start with the white papers and Help screens for configuring the
client and server components.
The biggest concern is connectivity because the mobile device will connect to your ActiveSync
server to resolve the FQDN in DNS, then establish a network connection through HTTPS to the
server. The implication, of course, is connectivity – because your mobile device will need to have
either a wireless network connection or a mobile wireless connection, such as the GPRS network, to
the Internet.

n Note Even though I’m connecting to Exchange Server 2003, the status screen says “Mobile
Information Server,” as Figure 6.13 shows. Don’t be alarmed; this designation is normal!

Figure 6.13
ActiveSync

You can use several ActiveSync settings, including one that lets you set the types of objects you
want to synchronize and the frequency of synchronization. If you’re concerned about data charges on
your mobile phone, you might elect to synchronize mail items only over-the-air and calendar and
contact items with the cradle.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks
120 The Expert’s Guide for Exchange 2003

j Tip
If you have problems getting the ActiveSync client to synchronize with Exchange Server 2003,
check the following:
• Recipient Policy – The primary SMTP address for your mailbox must match the rule used for
the Global Recipient Policy.
• SSL Certificate – The certificate used on the server should be from a recognized CA.
• Authentication – The Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync Virtual Directory on your server should
use Basic Authentication only.

Check online resources such as Microsoft’s support pages for Exchange Server 2003, Microsoft’s
support pages for MMIS, Microsoft’s microsoft.public.exchange and microsoft.public.mobility news-
groups, and http://www.cewindows.net/faqs/activesync/mis.htm.

Reviewing the Improvements

Microsoft has made dramatic improvements to both the Outlook and the Exchange products. Because
of the new efficiency of Outlook 2003 and OWA, you can now realize the promise of server consoli-
dation. Compression and intelligent synchronization provide better efficiency, and OMA ActiveSync
offers support for more devices.
The question of clients ultimately boils down to feature requirements. For example, Palm and
cradle synchronization as well as offline access require the Outlook client. For slow or unstable
network links, the Outlook client working in Cached mode offers uninterrupted support for end users
with fast response time for accessing mailbox items.

Next: Administrative Best Practices and Disaster Recovery

In Chapter 7, I return to the subject of Exchange Server 2003 and discuss administrative best practices
as well as disaster recovery. With recovery storage groups, you can now restore individual mailboxes
without disrupting the live database. In addition, new third-party tools can restore mailboxes or even
individual items with the backup files only. I’ll also consider how you can build redundancy into
your Exchange Server environment and which techniques you can use to monitor your Exchange
environment.

Brought to you by Quest Software and Windows & .NET Magazine eBooks