Linking Exchange Mailbox (Mail, Calendar, Contacts) to External Exchange Mailbox (Mail, Calendar, Contacts)
- Hi all,
I have a bit of a implementation dilemma regarding consolodating email and calendars from two seperate Exchange Systems. (One Exchange 2003 running on a Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Cluster) and another (Exchange 2007 running on SBS2008). (The SBS is local the Cluster is an external system accessed via SSL VPN).
Currently the user in question has to supports two profiles within Outlook 2003 in order to monitor the calendar and email from two accounts on two different exchange systems. This works as the SSL VPN determines the external connection by looking at Outlooks socket connections. The problem is that it is not an ideal situation.
What complicates this is the SSL VPN, the Exchange systems themselves have no direct access to each other (yet). This also means they are not on the same domain, forest or organisation.
Given that the calendars and mailboxes have to remain intact and ideally we only want the user to access the local SBS Exchange 2007; is there a way, and if many, what is the best way to consolodate these accounts? We could always mail forward from the external account but what about the calendar? How can we sync the calendars, is it possible? Am I looking a partial solution with some aspects required to be seperate?
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Many Thanks
NozFx
Answers
Minimum requirement to achieve this to have a trust running between the two forest and then next step is to use the InterOrg Replication Tool to replicate Free/Busy information. This allows recipients from one organization to schedule meetings with recipients in the other organization, and to be able to view each other's free/busy information.
Raj- Marked As Answer byNozFx Friday, October 30, 2009 11:30 AM
“Although you can synchronize free/busy information across forests and use it to schedule meetings, you cannot use the Open Other User's Folder feature in Microsoft Office Outlook to view the calendar details for a user in another forest”
----------------------------------------------Synchronizing Multiple Exchange 2003 Forests
Workaround: If you are using outlook 2007, the calendar can be published to internet, and then share to person in another company, but with read-only permission. Please view the articles below:
- Marked As Answer byNozFx Friday, October 30, 2009 11:30 AM
All Replies
Minimum requirement to achieve this to have a trust running between the two forest and then next step is to use the InterOrg Replication Tool to replicate Free/Busy information. This allows recipients from one organization to schedule meetings with recipients in the other organization, and to be able to view each other's free/busy information.
Raj- Marked As Answer byNozFx Friday, October 30, 2009 11:30 AM
- Hi Rajnish,
Thanks for your reply.
This sounds like a good solution but I am concerned we will not be permitted to go this far as to forming a trust relationship between our networks. With this in mind I assume that my options aside from this a limited? Without a trust relationship and replication in place are there any mechanisms to get calendars not just email?
Thanks
NozFc - Unfortunately I doubt this. And to be honest , without any trust, there is no way you can share the Exchange Data between two forests.
Raj “Although you can synchronize free/busy information across forests and use it to schedule meetings, you cannot use the Open Other User's Folder feature in Microsoft Office Outlook to view the calendar details for a user in another forest”
----------------------------------------------Synchronizing Multiple Exchange 2003 Forests
Workaround: If you are using outlook 2007, the calendar can be published to internet, and then share to person in another company, but with read-only permission. Please view the articles below:
- Marked As Answer byNozFx Friday, October 30, 2009 11:30 AM
Hi James,
Thank you ever so much for your reply. I will certainly look into this. It appears things like office live and sharepoint hold all the keys to the this kind of issue.
As a software developer I was considering developing an Exchange integration service using the Exchange OLE component. I probably could then grab all item types and even monitor appointments directly added to the calendar. This service could then output the items across the internet for another service to recieve and post back into another Exchange. I wonder if such a thing exists?
Regards
NozFX
