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Smartphone connection to Exchange?

Answered Smartphone connection to Exchange?

  • Thursday, April 19, 2012 6:23 PM
     
     
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    Hi,

    Hope this is the correct forum for a question of this nature.  We are running Exchange 2007 with Outlook 2010.  We have a company policy limiting the use of smart phones with our Exchange system and I recently found out that one of our users has figured out how to connect her smart phone to get her email.  Management asked me to block her access.

    I have disabled Exchange ActiveSync, Unified Messaging, Pop3 and IMAP so the only things left are MAPI and Outlook Web Access.  We do want the users to be able to use Outlook Web Access so I need to leave that on and I thought I read somewhere recently that Outlook didn’t require MAPI to connect within the network.  So I disabled it for every mailbox except those who are approved.

    Guess that was a mistake because now, earlier today, one by one my users have been losing Outlook. Some claim it even crashes their computers.  Figuring that the most recent change is the culprit I re-enabled MAPI for everyone.

    Slowly now my users are regaining their access.  But I have a couple questions.

    1.)   It looks like it takes time for the MAPI setting changes to take effect.  Is there any way to speed this up?  I have some users that have been down for a couple hours now while others are back up and running.

    2.)   What would be the proper approach to blocking email access from a smart phone or remote computer?  I’m guessing it will require a change to my corp. firewall, correct?

    Thanks in advance,

    Linn

     

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  • Friday, April 20, 2012 9:54 AM
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    Hello Linn,

    If you don't want users to access from a smart phone or remote computer, you can disable Outlook Web App feature, Exchange ActiveSync feature, POP3 and IMAP4 feature, but you cannot disable MAPI featue, because when you disable MAPI feature, Outlook also cannot login from local computers.

    Users access Exchange from remote computer are by Outlook anywhere, if you don't want users can do that, you can follow this document to disable it:

    Disable Outlook Anywhere
    http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124537.aspx

    Thanks,

    Evan

    Evan Liu

    TechNet Community Support

     
  • Thursday, April 26, 2012 1:37 AM
     
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    Are all your users able to access mail through MAPI/Outlook now?

    Otherwise, please note that if you disable OWA, that will disable it for computer use as well as for cell phone use, internally and externally.

    If you really want NO access to email from the outside, you would have to (in addition to disabling Outlook Anywhere - if it's enabled - and ActiveSync) either:

    1) Block at firewall (could block ports 80 and 443 only to mailserver - in case you want to allow such traffic to other nodes)

    2) Possibly remove A records in external DNS (???) But don't touch the MX records!

    Please mark as helpful if you find my contribution useful or as an answer if it does answer your question. That will encourage me - and others - to take time out to help you.

     
  • Monday, April 30, 2012 12:21 PM
     
     
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    We want users to use the Outlook Web Access(OWA) to get their email when off site.  But if the only way to prevent the phones from being connected is to block OWA then we are out of luck.  Blocking ports 80 and 443 at the firewall would also block OWA.  Very unfortunate.

    And I don't suppose there's any easy way to tell who's connecting via a smart phone and who's connecting via OWA is there?

    Thanks,

    Linn