At my current client I am doing an Exchange 2010 deployment into an environment that has Office/Outlook 2003 as the primary client. Ran into a few gotchas with this scenario.
1. Outlook 2003 with the default settings will not connect to a mailbox on Exchange 2010. This is because by default Exchange 2010 requires RPC Encryption between the client (Outlook) and the Exchange Server. Outlook 2003 does not have this enabled by default, Outlook 2007/2010 do have this enabled by default. You must choose the "more Settings" button when configuring an account in Outlook 2003 and select the Security tab to enable Encryption between Outlook and the Exchange Server. This can also be done via a GPO setting with Outlook 2003 provided you install the Office/Outlook 2003 ADM files and also modify the OutLK11.adm file to include the below Policy:
POLICY "Enable RPC Encryption"
KEYNAME Software\Policies\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\RPC
PART "Check to turn setting on; uncheck to turn setting off" CHECKBOX
VALUENAME EnableRPCEncrption
VALUEON Numeric 1
VALUEOFF Numeric 0
END PART
END POLICY
2. Outlook 2003 in Online mode is slow to update deleted items sometimes resulting in unknown error messages. This is because Exchange 2010 does not issue UDP notifications to Outlook 2003, it defaults to a 60 second polling cycle. This behavior is somewhat corrected with Update Rollup 1 for Exchange 2010 and a RegHack on the Exchange 2010 CAS servers. For a description of Update Rollup 1 and a download location go here, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;976573
The RegHack is located and explained here, http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;2009942&sd=rss&spid=13965
I recommend setting ParametersSystem to 10000, as this is the minimum time (10 seconds) that Outlook 2003 will pole for updates from Exchange. It is to be noted that this change will result in an additional load on the Exchange 2010 server hosting the CAS role, plan accordingly.
The best way to alleviate this problem is to upgrade the Outlook clients to 2007 (and 2010 when available) versions. The fix for #2 above with only improve the problem, not completely solve it.
As always if you need any help with an Exchange deployment please do not hesitate to contact me directly at Sean dot McNeill at Statera dot com.
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Just wanted to give you an update on the UDP issue. During the writing of http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/concern-is-having-outlook-2003-clients-going-to-prevent-me-from-deploying-exchange-2010.aspx, I did a new discovery. Although KB article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2009942 stated 10 seconds as the lower limite, the lower limit is actually 5 seconds polling intervals when the "Maximum Polling Frequency" key is set to "5000".
ReplyDeleteThis has been confirmed with relevant Exchange and Outlook PMs.
The KB article has also been updated to reflect this.
/Henrik