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Outlook Web Access URL parameters

  • Article

On
a previous entry, I described the URL parameter for accessing the dumpster
via OWA. There are actually many many more URL parameters you can use directly
or embed in other web pages. For example, all of the following can be retrieved with
a URL:

- The list of items (messages, contacts, appointments) and the view associated with them

The navigation bar on the left-hand side of the screen  
(ok, right hand side if you're using a hebrew or arabic Accept-Language)
  • The "compose" form, used to create a new item
  • A certain day on your calendar
  • The preview/reading pane
  • Various dialogs and pages such as the Options page

Today's tip is a quick highlight of some of the
URL parameters you can use for displaying a view of items in a folder.

 

For example, if you want to point at a public
folder, you can embed it into a separate web page with an IFRAME:

 

<iframe width=800 height=400
src="https://myserver/public/mypublicfolder/?cmd=contents">

 

This displays the list of items and the view (which
includes the reading pane) for that public folder. If you want to specify the view
that should be used, just append the name of the view as another URL parameter:

 

<iframe width=800 height=400
src="https://myserver/public/mypublicfolder/?cmd=contents&view=Two%20Line%20View">

 

The list of possible view names can be seen in
the OWA UI; in OWA 2000 it's in a drop-down list on the toolbar, in OWA 2003 it's
in a drop-down list next to the name of the folder (in the same pane as the list of
items).

 

You
can also specify the view for another folder type, such as a calendar folder. The
following URL will display this week's calendar (which could be really useful to embed
onto a home page for your browser, to get a quick glance at your calendar without
requiring you to go to OWA):

 

<iframe
width=800 height=400 src="https://myserver/exchange/username/calendar/?cmd=contents&view=weekly">

 

To
go to a specific day in your calendar (or any calendar folder), using my son's birthday
as an example:

 

<iframe
width=800 height=400 src="https://myserver/exchange/username/calendar/?cmd=contents&d=8&m=6&y=2003">

 

Note: Accessing any of these
OWA URLs will require you to authenticate. If you're using IE and accessing a back-end
server directly (and forms-based authentication from OWA 2003 is not enabled on that
server) and Integrated Windows Authentication is enabled, you won't be prompted for
credentials. If you're using another browser that doesn't support NTLM/Kerberos or
you're using a URL to a front-end server, you will be prompted to log on and will
have to enter your credentials.

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    PingBack from http://amiya.freeindiamusiconline.info/usingformswithoutlookwebaccessauthenticationtopostinpublicfolders.html

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    PingBack from http://www.keyongtech.com/2023617-shared-contact-calender-with-wss

  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    "The list of possible view names can be seen in the OWA UI; in OWA 2000 it's in a drop-down list on the toolbar, in OWA 2003 it's in a drop-down list next to the name of the folder (in the same pane as the list of items). "In OWA 2003, Where is this? I was looking for a way to create a SENDTO shortcut to allow OWA to act like "mail recipient"

  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    The part you quoted has nothing to do with sending mail, it is about how the list of items is displayed in the folder. For your question, it would require some programming. There's a third party product that does this: http://www.messageware.com/products/owamail2003.html

  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    Short of creating a new view to use in OWA, I'm curious how to expand a topic in the public folders. For example, if the view was "By Conversation Topic" (.../?Cmd=contents?view=by%20conversation%20topic), is there a URL parameter to expand all topics to see the list of messages?

  • Anonymous
    December 09, 2003
    I'm not aware of a way to do that... When you click on the + to expand a topic, it does a SEARCH specifically for the items from that conversation thread.

  • Anonymous
    December 13, 2003
    I love the idea of using an iframe of OWA 2003 to display the week view on my home page! Thank you! Is it possible to remove the right pane of the week view (which contains the month), so that there is more room for the week's events to display in the iframe?

  • Anonymous
    December 13, 2003
    clarification: what I want to remove from the OWA week view is the taskpad that has the thumbnail view of the month. is there something like... &view=notaskpad ? thanks again

  • Anonymous
    December 18, 2003
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    February 11, 2004
    Hi KC, is there a parameter to set the time zone used in a calendar view, or to use only the OWA server time zone and ignore time zone settings on the client? We are publishing a public folder calendar for a lot of events, and people keep turning up at the wrong time because they have wrong time zones set on their PCs. Thanks a lot, Frank

  • Anonymous
    February 12, 2004
    Unfortunately no, not with the uplevel (IE5+, Windows) client. The downlevel client (any other browser like IE4, IE on Solaris, Netscape, etc) does use the setting on the user's option page to render, regardless of the local PC's timezone, so you could force the downlevel client when you publish the PF calendar.

    Here are some examples:

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;310594 (affects all requests through that virtual server, but you could create a new VS for just the PF calendar, but you'd need a separate IP/hostname)

    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;311154: Force the downlevel client on a per-user basis. Would affect every request that user makes to the server, so even if they use OWA to look at their mailbox, they'd get the downlevel experience

    http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=296232: Applies per (Back-end) server.

  • Anonymous
    February 17, 2004
    Is it possible to remove the preview/reading pane so that the users do not have this option when using OWA 2003?

    Thanks

  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2004
    There is no easy configuration option to do this, but it would be possible with a fair amount of programming. If that is something you're interested in, let me know and I will point you at the resources.

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2004
    I work for a school system they want a way to publish the school calendar to the web and make it update automatically without having to republish to the web site? Is there a way to make a calendar public so anyone can veiw it from a web page without having to authenticate. We use Outlook 2002 and Exchange 2K

    Thanks, KC

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2004
    You can make a public calendar folder anonymously accessible, and embed the URL to the calendar in another web page like:

    <iframe src="http://server/public/calendar/?cmd=contents">

  • Anonymous
    March 23, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    March 31, 2004
    Can we add reminders in owa calender from asp.net application

  • Anonymous
    March 31, 2004
    Is there a way to filter the events in the calander? We have Exchange 2000. I would like to show only vacation on the calendar link. We have a site on our intranet that has all the departments calendars but I would like one that shows only vacation. Thanks

  • Anonymous
    March 31, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 06, 2004
    Can I point to the Taks Only in Outlook??

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2004
    Can I point to the OWA 2003 without the BAsic Authentication by sending the username/password in the URL in the IFrame ?

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2004
    Noora: I'm not sure what you're asking. If you want to go directly to the tasks folder, it's just http://server/exchange/user/tasks (for US). For Intl, there's a post on the exchange blog (http://blogs.msdn.com/exchange) from Tosh Meston about how to do that.

    Sherif: No, sorry.

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2004
    In a web browser I can use the following.

    http://<server>/exchange/%username%/inbox?cmd=contents

    How can I do this in an iframe without hard coding a username?

  • Anonymous
    April 07, 2004
    Unfortunately STP, there is no built in URL to do this that doesn't include the user's alias.

    However, if this is for use in an intranet scenario where you have a Windows domain, you might try setting up an ASP on a VDIR (that has windows authentication turned on) which will take your domain alias from the LOGON_USER server variable and use that to build the URL which you will redirect to.

    Something along these lines:
    <%@ LANGUAGE="VBSCRIPT" %>
    <%
    Dim s
    Dim s1

    s = Request.ServerVariables("LOGON_USER")
    s1 = Mid(s, InStr(1, s, "") + 1)

    Response.Redirect("http://<server>/exchange/" + s1 + "/inbox?cmd=contents")
    %>

    Hope that is helpful.

  • Anonymous
    April 20, 2004
    Any way that you know of to pass the username and password to the OWA form in the URL?

  • Anonymous
    April 21, 2004
    Is there a way to add field values to the end of the url when using a new request to auto add the subject, body and attachments?

    http://<server>/exchange/username/drafts?cmd=new&subject=Test Message&body=Message Body

  • Anonymous
    April 22, 2004
    Is there a way to hide the toolbar of the inbox ?

    The following URL works with IE but not the other browsers : http://server/exchange/username/Inbox/?Cmd=contents&View=messages&part=1

    Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    April 23, 2004
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    April 27, 2004
    is it possible to update exchange calender through an external asp.net/asp application? if yes, plz refer to some resources on this.

    thanks

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2004
    Is it possible to create a new Appointment, Task or Reminder using the URL parameters?

  • Anonymous
    May 04, 2004
    You can do a ?cmd=new in the appropriate folder to create a task/appointment. Reminders are created by setting properties on appointments, and you'd need to do that with HTTP, potentially using xmlhttp.

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2004
    Thanks a million KC for a quick answer. Is there a way I can pass Username and Password for authentication by using URL and write Subject and Message also in URL and wrap all that in a HTML page?

  • Anonymous
    May 05, 2004
    No, you can't do that all in the URL. Actually, you can't do any of that in the URL.

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2004
    Hi KC.
    I defined a view in a public calendar folder called "3rd Level Support". This view has a filter to only display items with the category "Third Level Support". I made the view available to everyone on the network and everyone sees it in their regular Outlook client. However when I use the URL in OWA to display that view:
    https://[server name]/public/Calendar/?Cmd=contents&view=3rd%20level%20support
    the page is displayed without applying the filter specified in that view. We are using Exchange Server 2000 and OWA 2000. How can I make the view work with the URL?

    Thanks,
    Raphael

  • Anonymous
    May 12, 2004
    Raphael: OWA doesn't support custom views in the calendar folder, only mail.

  • Anonymous
    June 17, 2004
    Any way to request a return of WebDav-type/ICS type XML message?

    All this mention that OWA makes us of WebDav, can not find a URL-based (or any remote/non-windows) way to request a webdav calendar call and get xml/ics message rather than formatted-for-browser javascript+html.

    Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    June 21, 2004
    Mike: Try setting Translate: false on the HTTP GET call. Not 100% sure if that will work, but if anything would, that is it.

  • Anonymous
    June 24, 2004
    Hello guys, This is very urgent, I would be grateful if any one could get back to me about this. Im setting a web portal with SSO SITEMINDER. I would like to make a link on the portal's web page that points to user's exchange account. Im not familiar with MS Exchange. THe thing is that SITEMINDER doesn't work with Exchange 2003 ( a compatibility problem between filters). So Im thinking about a way to work around. When the user connects to the portal with his login and password, I will get his exchange Login and password (from an LDAP directory). I would like to know if there is a way to pass the login/password to Exchange (when user clicks on the link to exchange) so It could connect the user to his mail account without getting the Login OWA form. I was thinking about modifying Exchange Login.asp page, but Im not sure how it works. Thanks guys

  • Anonymous
    July 02, 2004
    Hi!!, I need to add a button to the Mail tool bar in OWA, that it is possible to be done by programing?, you know where i can find and example that works in OWA 2000 or 2003? Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    July 06, 2004
    Is there a way to create a new message from an ASP.NET application, pre-populate the body, then open it in a new window and allow the user to do what they want with it from there and then send it?

  • Anonymous
    July 11, 2004
    is there any way to see tasks in url please help

  • Anonymous
    July 15, 2004
    Is there any way of getting the contents of the inbox as XML?

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2004
    To folks asking how to pass username and password to OWA via a URL, the following syntax may work for you:

    https://username:password@owa-server/exchange/

    Jacob

  • Anonymous
    August 05, 2004
    Do you know of a URL that will keep the right-side preview pane from appearing by default?

    We want to continue to encourage our users to leave the preview pane on the desktop client closed, and we wish to be consistent with what we offer via OWA.

  • Anonymous
    August 05, 2004
    Hello everybody

    I want my Inbox folder should be access able out of the network even on a webpage.If any employee in the field can access the outllok inbox on the webpage .

    thank you