Problem : With the increase in mobile devices and companies such as BlackBerry
offering the technology to push mail to their devices, there is an
obvious need for Microsoft to increase its ActiveSync capabilities
within Exchange 2007 SP1, and it did this. For starters, what
configuration options do you have on the server?
Solution : To locate the properties you can configure for your ActiveSync services, perform the following:
1. | Open the EMC.
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2. | From the Navigation Tree, expand the Server Configuration work center and click Client Access.
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3. | From the Work pane, select the Exchange ActiveSync tab.
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4. | Notice the Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync option. Select it and choose Properties.
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You are presented with
three tabs: General, Authentication, and Remote File Servers. The
configuration for each of these is relatively simple:
General—
From here you can see the server and site name, whether SSL is enabled
(which it should be by default) and the last date of modification. You
also have an Internal and External URL that is informational regarding
the location of the ActiveSync virtual directory on the CAS server.
Authentication—
Here you select the authentication method or methods that the virtual
directory will accept. You can enable basic authentication by selecting
the checkbox, although if you use this form of authentication, you
should use SSL to ensure encryption of the data between the mobile
device and the server. You can also use client certificate
authentication. If you make changes here, they automatically update the
IIS metabase.
Remote File Servers—
Recall that with OWA, clients can access files and file servers. The
same is true with ActiveSync clients. You can configure the servers you
wish to block or allow from within in the same manner as you did for
OWA. In addition, you can configure domain suffixes that are treated as
internal.
The most powerful aspect of ActiveSync is the capability to control devices through policies.
