Installation of OWA For PDA / OWA For WAP

Requirements:

Windows NT4 Server running IIS4 with Outlook Web Access 5.5, or
Windows 2000 Server with Outlook Web Access 5.5, or
Windows 2000 Server running MS Exchange 2000

Using OWA For PDA / WAP with Windows NT4 Server running IIS4 with Outlook Web Access 5.5

OWA For PDA / OWA For WAP require IIS with Active Server Pages and CDO/MAPI support. Under Windows NT4 Server, this is generally only available on a machine that already has a working Outlook Web Access 5.5 installation. If these requirements are met, installation is as described below in the 'Installation' section.

Using OWA For PDA / WAP with Windows 2000 Server running IIS5 with Outlook Web Access 5.5

OWA For PDA / OWA For WAP require IIS with Active Server Pages and CDO/MAPI support. Under Windows 2000 Server (without Exchange 2000 Server) this is generally only available on a machine that already has a working Outlook Web Access 5.5 installation. If these requirements are met, installation is as described below in the 'Installation' section.

Using OWA For PDA / WAP with Windows 2000 Server running IIS5 with Exchange 2000

OWA For PDA / OWA For WAP are compatible with Exchange 2000, but there are a number of extra configuration tasks you will need to complete that would normally be done during the installation of Outlook Web Access 5.5. You can do these either before, or after, the procedure described in the 'Installation' section.

You will need to give the 'Everyone' group the 'Log On Locally' right in the Windows 2000 'Local Security Policy' Control Panel applet, or in the 'Domain Controller Security Policy' applet for an Active Directory Domain Controller.

CDO (as supplied with Exchange 5.5, but also supplied with Exchange 2000 for compatibility) will attempt to store temporary .mmp files in C:\WINNT unless another directory is specified as a string value in the registry key;

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows Messaging Subsystem\ProfileDirectory

If you do not make this modification, only Administrators will be able to open their mailboxes. Since you need to modify the registry, you need to back it up, and proceed with extreme caution. There are three stages.:

1. Create a directory i.e. C:\WebTemp using Windows Explorer. Make sure that the 'Everyone' group has at least change permissions on the directory.

2. Create a string type registry key as specified above. Set it's value equal to the name of the directory you created in step 1. A .reg file to help create this entry is included in the OWA For PDA / OWA For WAP package. It contains the directory name C:\WebTemp. You can edit it if you want to use a different directory. Note that the backslash character must be doubled (like this; \\ ) if you need to enter one as part of a registry key value in a .reg file.

3. Stop and restart the World Wide Web Publishing Service when it is next convenient to do so.

Remember that you only need to do this for Exchange 2000.

Installation:

First, use Explorer to create a folder to contain the package ASP files. In the example described, the folder is named OWA-PDA and is located in the root of the IIS server's C: drive. Copy the ASP files into the folder and close Explorer.

Using Notepad, edit the file named DEFINE.INC so that the line beginning CONST SERVERNAME contains the computer name of your MS Exchange server. Do not make the mistake of entering the name of your IIS server unless they happen to be the same machine. In this example, the server is called MYSERVER. Remember to retain the double quotes " ". Save the file and close Notepad.

Start the IIS Manager and expand the tree in the left-hand pane to reveal the Default Web Site.

Create a new Virtual Directory under the Default Web Site and configure it as shown in the following diagrams. In this example, the Virtual Directory is called OWA-PDA and the source files have been copied to C:\OWA-PDA

Having created the Virtual Directory, check its properties and make a few more adjustments as shown in the following diagrams. You probably won't need to change anything on the first page, but it's a good idea to double-check it.

Make sure that there is an entry for DEFAULT.ASP in the list of default documents for the Virtual Directory. If it is not in the list, add it.

Select Basic Authentication and de-select Anonymous Access. In Windows 2000, deselect Digest Authentication and Integrated Authentication so that only Basic Authentication is enabled. In Windows NT 4.0, deselect Windows NT Challenge/Response so that only Basic Authentication is enabled.

If your OWA server is a Member Server, click the button labelled 'Edit' next to the Basic Authentication option and set the Basic Authentication Domain to your Windows NT domain name. In this example it is called MYDOMAIN.

Finally, check the IP Address and Domain Name restrictions to make sure that no unwanted restrictions have been inherited from the Default Web Site (unless, of course, you want to retain any such restrictions).

And that's it. You can now access the site using the Virtual Directory name. So, for example, if your IIS server is called MYIISSERVER, and your Virtual Directory is called OWA-PDA as in this example, you can open the site with HTTP://MYIISSERVER/OWA-PDA .

After Installation:

There are additional options that you can configure within DEFINE.INC. Some are described within the file itself, but here are some important ones:

EXPANDFOLDERS - Set to True if you want to be able to select any mail folder from the main Mailbox page. If you try to list too many folders in the WAP version, the 'phone's browser may crash, so for WAP it is recommended to set this value to False, and that any mailbox subfolders be selected after first selecting the top-level folder.

MAXPAGESIZE - This controls how much of each message is displayed per page in the mobile device browser. How much you can safely display depends on the capabilities of the device you are using. This value is especially critical for the correct operation of WAP devices which have a total maximum page size (including markup etc.) of approximately 1500 bytes. The current recommended maximum message page size for WAP is 400 bytes.

MESSAGESPERPAGE - This value is largely a matter of personal preference with a PDA device, but again the value is critical for WAP devices.

PASSWORDACCESS (PDA only) - Set to True if you have configured your OWA server to allow Web clients to change their passwords, and you want to extend this functionality to PDA clients. Set to False otherwise.

Attachments (PDA only):

OWA For PDA can be configured to deliver attachments to your mobile device, but whether or not you will be able to open them depends entirely upon the client platform. PocketPC devices will normally be able to save attachments to the file system for subsequent opening. Palm devices will probably have only limited success.

If you want to configure the application to deliver attachments you need to set the value of OPENATTACHMENTS in Define.inc to True

CONST OPENATTACHMENTS = True

You will also need to configure a Custom Error message for the error '404 - Not found' on your OWA-PDA Virtual Directory. Mobile browsers do not understand content types as comprehensively as desktop browsers and need to believe that the attachment exists as a file on the server (which it does not - it's embedded in the message). When the browser requests the file, the custom 404 error page extracts the attachment and delivers it.

The configuration you need to make is to define /OWA-PDA/AT2.ASP as the URL for the 404 error (assuming that OWA-PDA is the name of your Virtual Directory). Open the properties of the OWA-PDA Virtual Directory and click the 'Custom Errors' tab. Select error 404 from the list and click the 'Edit Properties...' button. Select 'URL' from the 'Message Type:' drop-down list, and enter /OWA-PDA/AT2.ASP . Finally click 'OK' and 'OK' once more to save your changes.