Searching...
Tuesday 12 February 2013
2/12/2013 03:16:00 am 0

What is AutoDiscover service in Exchange 2007?

AutoDiscover in Exchange 2007 is a Microsoft Exchange service that makes it easier to configure Outlook 2007 clients. AutoDiscover service is necessary for the user if he wants to use/access Microsoft Exchange features (i.e. Unified Messaging (UM), the offline address book (OAB), OOF and the Availability service etc.) on Outlook client.
With the help of AutoDiscover service the Outlook 2007 client retrieves the URLS for Exchange 2007 web services so, that the Outlook client user can access them.

How does AutoDiscover service work?

For domain-joined clients:
When Client Access server is installed on a computer running Exchange 2007, then Autodiscover service & service connection point (SCP) object are automatically created.

AutoDiscover: It is a virtual directory that is created in Internet Information Services (IIS) under the default Web site. This virtual directory handles AutoDiscover service requests for domain-joined clients.


The SCP object: It is an Active Directory object which contains the authoritative list of AutoDiscover service URLs for Exchange 2007. ServiceBindingInfo attribute of SCP object contains fully qualified domain name (FQDN) of the Client Access server (CAS).

Whenever a domain-joined client makes request for Exchange service then, service connection point (SCP) is used by Outlook client to locate the URL of AutoDiscover service and then, it connects to this URL. Once the client finds AutoDiscover service and establish a connection with it, then, URLs for other exchange web services are provided to the client by the AutoDiscover service itself.
Note: For each client access server a separate Active Directory entry or SCP is created. 


For non-domain-joined clients:
Whenever a non-domain-joined client makes request for Exchange service then, AutoDiscover service is located with the help of user’s SMTP e-mail address.

The URL for AutoDiscover service in that case will be
https://<smtp-address-domain>/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
Such as: https://company.com/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml
                                  Or
https://autodiscover.<smtp-address-domain>/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml.
Such as: https://Autodiscover.company.com/Autodiscover/Autodiscover.xml
 
Once the client finds the URL for AutoDiscover service and establish a connection with it, then, URLs for other exchange web services are provided to the client by the AutoDiscover service itself, the same way it does in case of domain-joined client.

You need to deploy the AutoDiscover service to access Microsoft Exchange 2007 features by Outlook 2007 clients. First you need to configure the Exchange services so that they can be accessed by users. After that you can configure the Exchange services for the AutoDiscover service.

0 comments:

Post a Comment