Sending Mail to AD Exchange Enabled Groups

[Perbix, Michael]

>From my experience, Exchange in and of itself is actually a good backend (please no flaming, I am just putting out my opinion based on my use in our environment) and we use it with our Macs using Entourage, Apple Mail Client, Blackberry's, Motorola Q with ActiveSync (and soon iPhone), Outlook Web Access and of course Outlook and everyone gets along quite merrily.

The biggest issue that I see when mail refuses to be sent (and this can be verified by looking at Exchange logs) is that mail coming from unauthenticated users could look like a relay and be stopped or the user sending mail to the group does not have permissions.

If the user CAN send mail to the group from Outlook or Outlook Web Acess, then they most certainly should be able to from Entourage.  Make sure that Entourage is set up as an Exchange client (when you create the account in Entourage check the little box that says "My account is hosted on Exchange".

Also, make sure that in the outgoing server setting in Entourage that if SMTP needs to be authenticated, that the proper settings are checked and valid account info is entered.

We have a large OSX base here (about 7,000 machines) and all our faculty use OSX, so it is not something inherent in OSX with Exchange and is simply a configuration issue either at the client or on the server.  But the best place to start would be trying to send mail from OWA (if enabled).

    -Mike

________________________________________________
Michael Perbix
Lower Merion School District
Network Technician

> >-----Original Message-----
> >From: macosx-admin-bounces at omnigroup.com [mailto:macosx-admin-
> >bounces at omnigroup.com] On Behalf Of John C. Welch
> >Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2008 7:05 AM
> >To: Omni List
> >Subject: Re: Sending Mail to AD Exchange Enabled Groups
> >
> >On 4/29/08 12:26 AM, "Mike Friedman" <mgf at mgfconsulting.net> wrote:
> >
> >>> There's a LOT of variables in using AB with Active Directory. For
> >>> one, do
> >>> they have Active Directory in the contact paths in Directory
> >>> Utility? Do
> >>> they have the proper searchbase? Active Directory LDAP lookups tend to
> >>> require authentication, and in AB, you tend to have to do the kerberos
> >>> principal-style user names.
> >>>
> >>> If you can search the GAL, then the distribution lists should show
> >>> up. You
> >>> can't edit or create them, but you can use them.
> >>>
> >>> As far as exchange goes, other than costs, the biggest problem tends
> >>> to be
> >>> that too many exchange administrators don't know a damned thing
> >>> about email.
> >>>
> >>> Oh, is this exchange 2003 or 2008?
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >> It's 2003. They can do the lookups on the GAL (authenticated). Sadly,
> >> the reason that exchange was chosen was because of cost (low because
> >> they are a charity and got a license for next to nothing).
> >>
> >> As far as I remember, it's in the contact path in directory util, but
> >> that is something to check, thanks. I like to think that I'm fairly
> >> well versed in both worlds, but this has really been stumping me and
> >> annoying the client.
> >
> >I believe it's annoying them ;-) However, if they're using Exchange with
> >just Apple's software, they could replace it with almost any backend and
> >never notice.
> >
> >--
> >John C. Welch         Writer/Analyst
> >Bynkii.com              Mac and other opinions
> >jwelch at bynkii.com
> >
> >
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