RPC/HTTPS & OUTLOOK ANYWHERE

Dear all,

Good day. We are back to Blogs again. This time, we would like to share out on Outlook Anywhere, the new name for RPC/HTTPS in Exchange 2007. The concept is still the same, but now, you need to know more theory on what role to deploy and configure.

To summary on how to configure this cool feature, means you do not need a VPN to access your Exchange server using Outlook 2003/Outlook 2007.

The first thing you might want to think about is the certificate. It is recommended that you purchase the certificate rather than setup up one in your organization although it is FREE.

However, we will share on how to configure the certificate.

1) Setup a certificate authority in your organization; we will try to publish on how to do this in coming blogs.

2) Configure your IIS6 (Windows 2003) to use the Web Server certificate.

3) Export the certificate out to a .pfx file extension. You can then copy the certificate to a tumb drive/diskette drive for install this certificate to client side (You can use AD Group Policy to deploy to Windows 2000 workstations and above)

4) Install the certificate to the client workstation

NOTE: Please ensure the installation is successful. To check, simply launch Internet browser to the website that is hosting the RPC Proxy, most of the time, OWA; eg: https://companyname.com/exchange. You should not get any prompt for the untrust certificate. If you can any prompt, please check on the certificate installation.

On Outlook side,

1) For first time launching outlook users, email accounts window prompt. Select “Add a new e-mail account” selection.

2) Click Next.

3) Select Microsoft Exchange Server, click Next.
On the Exchange Server Settings, under Microsoft Exchange Server key-in mailboxexchangeserver.com, key in on the User Name. Click Next.

4) A warning is prompted that the Microsoft Exchange server is unavailable. Click OK to continue.

5) When the window prompt, click on Connection tab. Check “Connect to my Exchange Mailbox using HTTP”. Click Exchange Proxy Settings…

6) On Exchange Proxy Settings, under Proxy authentication settings, select “Basic Authentication”, under Connection settings, key in https://yourpublishproxyserver.com, select Mutually authenticate the session when connecting with SSL, on the Principal name for proxy server: msstd: yourpublishproxyserver.com. Select only “on slow network, connect using HTTP first, then connect using TCP/IP”. Click OK.

7) Launch Outlook 2003, please be patient to wait for the Outlook 2003 to connect to Exchange 2003. Key-in username and password when prompted

NOTE: You can check by clicking Start-> Run-> outlook /rpcdiag to test out whether the outlook is running fine using HTTPS

Till then, this is the good feature to test out.