The past two days I had to undergo what I believed to be a fairly simple task: Setting up our Exchange 2003 Server for RPC over HTTP. This was basically because we have a few people complaining that hey have to use Outlook Web Access instead of the Outlook client when they are at home or, those working at a remote location. The remote locations are set up with VPN connections, but it’s really too slow to have Outlook setup at each PC.
This wasn’t necessarily my decision to implement this. I see the benefits and I don’t have a VPN connection at home, so I wouldn’t mind using it but I don’t exactly have a pattern of making more work for myself when I have enough already. Rather, this decision was made by management after receiving these complaints from their underlings at the branches:
Complaint: I don’t have email at my PC.
The Truth: They don’t have the Outlook client setup at their PC. They do have email by means of Outlook Web Access. Adding to the irony, this particular complaint was sent in an email.
Complaint: I can’t put those items that you wanted on my Task List because I don’t have Outlook.
The Truth: Task lists are accessible in Outlook Web Access. It’s right there underneath the Inbox. Right in front of you.
Complaint: I wasn’t able to get that email to you right away because I don’t have Outlook. Outlook Web Access doesn’t get email right away.
The Truth: Give me a break, now you’re just reaching for excuses to not have to work. There’s even a little pop up box when you get a new email. It’s fast enough for your personal email.
But I digress. So anyway, yesterday I blocked off a few hours to implement this. I understood the concept and what was necessary and so I thought that by freeing up two hours, I was being more than generous.
I just finished it right now. One day and 3 hours later.
There is absolutely no reason why it shouldn’t have taken that long. There was a nice lesson learned though, and I’ll share it with you now:
READ EVERYTHING
I had everything setup within 30 minutes. However, I spent almost a day and a half troubleshooting why it wasn’t working. Finally, after reading and re-reading the same 15 articles/columns/websites, my eyes settled on something I had previously skipped over: When connecting from outside the domain – you have to import the SSL certificate. Every article pretty much stated the same thing. However, I skipped over it every time because it was always in the middle of a paragraph that started talking about how you needed a SSL certificate for your Exchange server. I thought, “Well I don’t need to read this, we already have one”. As soon as I imported the certificate everything started working like magic. Magic that took too long and gave me a migraine in the process. Lesson learned.
April 26, 2007 at 12:43 am
It took me a few tries to get the darned thing working on the server-side, and then even some more on the client-side.
I ended up hiring an Exchange expert to handle it – because I also wanted to expose all this on my ISA 2004 firewall.
So I have three major rules on the ISA box:
1 for OWA
1 for OMA (Outlook Mobile Access, text version of OWA for phones) & Exchange ActiveSync – allowing mobiles to wirelessly sync
1 for RPC over HTTPS
The Exchange setup was also no cup of tea. I think we should compile a good doc with screenshots and diagrams and everything, because we’re not the only ones with this problem.