Autodiscover and Entourage 2008 SP1

K

Kevin Bird

Is there an override/workaround for manually configuring autodiscover on the
client (similar to the registry entries and local XML file on the PC side)?
I can't find any documentation on it... and we need it to work this way in
our environment.
 
W

William Smith

Kevin said:
Is there an override/workaround for manually configuring autodiscover on the
client (similar to the registry entries and local XML file on the PC side)?
I can't find any documentation on it... and we need it to work this way in
our environment.
Click to expand...

Go to this page on Microsoft's website
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/itpros/default.mspx> and search for
"AutoDiscover".

You'll be presented with two topics:

Preparing the nfrastructure
Configuring an Exchange account in Entourage

Hope this helps!

--

bill

William M. Smith, Microsoft Interop MVP - Mac/Windows
Entourage Help Page <http://entourage.mvps.org/>
Entourage Help Blog <http://blog.entourage.mvps.org/>
 
K

Kevin Bird

Unfortunately, that's the way people set up Entourage now (manual
configuration). But especially with SP1, Entourage 2008 (rightly so) expects
AutoDiscover to be findable based on the root of the users' email address, to
locate Exchange Web Services and the Free/Busy, Delegate, and Out Of Office
web services on Exchange 2007. In our environment, we have an issue where a
good portion of our users share a root domain address for which we cannot
configure autodiscover in DNS. Therefore, on the Outlook 2007 side of
things, we use the manual registry overrides and a local XML file to enable
the client to locate the desired Exchange EWS services based on the users'
email address even though it is not in DNS. This is what is needed on the
Entourage 2008 side...

Kevin
 
B

Barry Wainwright

Kevin Bird said:
Unfortunately, that's the way people set up Entourage now (manual
configuration). But especially with SP1, Entourage 2008 (rightly so) expects
AutoDiscover to be findable based on the root of the users' email address, to
locate Exchange Web Services and the Free/Busy, Delegate, and Out Of Office
web services on Exchange 2007. In our environment, we have an issue where a
good portion of our users share a root domain address for which we cannot
configure autodiscover in DNS. Therefore, on the Outlook 2007 side of
things, we use the manual registry overrides and a local XML file to enable
the client to locate the desired Exchange EWS services based on the users'
email address even though it is not in DNS. This is what is needed on the
Entourage 2008 side...

Kevin
Click to expand...


In that case I would consider using an applescript to set up and
configure the Entourage Exchange account according to your unique
circumstances and the user's variable data. The setting up of accounts
is highly scriptable in Entourage.
 
K

Kevin Bird

I think both answers haven't gotten at the true problem here... the problem
is not in configuration at all. The issue is that even when properly and
totally configured, the autodiscover service is polled (if it is the same as
Outlook 2007 -- once per hour) and this information is used to locate
free/busy etc. When the client cannot find this information in DNS, and
without a mechanism to locally override the autodiscover resolution process
and point the client at a particular server for autodiscover operations, this
process fails, thus causing free/busy, configuration of out of office
messages, delegate operations, and availability in meeting requests to fail.
I have seen no place in the user interface nor a file location nor a
scripting parameter in Entourage 2008 to configure the override domains and
specify the XML. Take a look at
http://exchange-genie.blogspot.com/2007/07/autodiscover-ad-attribute.html
under the section "deploying an xml file" -- this is what I (and likely
others) need to be able to do, specify the domain with the local location of
the file, and the xml in the file, and the option to prefer the local vs the
network attempt.
 
B

Barry Wainwright

Kevin Bird said:
I think both answers haven't gotten at the true problem here... the problem
is not in configuration at all. The issue is that even when properly and
totally configured, the autodiscover service is polled (if it is the same as
Outlook 2007 -- once per hour) and this information is used to locate
free/busy etc. When the client cannot find this information in DNS, and
without a mechanism to locally override the autodiscover resolution process
and point the client at a particular server for autodiscover operations, this
process fails, thus causing free/busy, configuration of out of office
messages, delegate operations, and availability in meeting requests to fail.
I have seen no place in the user interface nor a file location nor a
scripting parameter in Entourage 2008 to configure the override domains and
specify the XML. Take a look at
http://exchange-genie.blogspot.com/2007/07/autodiscover-ad-attribute.html
under the section "deploying an xml file" -- this is what I (and likely
others) need to be able to do, specify the domain with the local location of
the file, and the xml in the file, and the option to prefer the local vs the
network attempt.
Click to expand...

OK, sorry - I misunderstood your first query.

I'm not aware of any mechanism that allows you to change the places that
Entourage looks within the application. It may (should?) be possible to
configure the location of the xml files defining the server information
within the DNS server (set up a alias record to redirect the default
autodiscover.domain.local to your preferred location), but I admit to
being no expert in this type of set-up.

I will escalate this query and try and get a more authoritative
statement form MS.
 
H

Hui Nee Chin

Hi Kevin,

There's currently no manual way to tell Entourage which autodiscover
server to use, however if you can provide us with some information regarding
how your server environment is set up, we may be able to suggest a
workaround.





Regards,
Hui Nee Chin - huchinATmicrosoftDOTcom
Microsoft Entourage Test
Disclaimer: This mail is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers
no rights.
 
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