Configuring for Monitoring Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile Access, and Exchange ActiveSync

 

To monitor Microsoft® Office Outlook® Web Access, Outlook Mobile Access, and Exchange ActiveSync®, you must do additional configuration steps in the Configuration Wizard and, optionally, in the Windows registry. The Configuration Wizard has a Default and a Custom option to enable and configure monitoring for Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile Access, and Exchange ActiveSync, as explained in the following sections.

To enable monitoring using the Default option

1. In the Configuration Wizard, when you select the Default configuration option, availability monitoring for Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile Access, and Exchange ActiveSync is automatically enabled.

To enable monitoring using the Custom option

1. In the Configuration Wizard, if you select the Custom configuration option, and if you select a front-end server to be configured, the wizard displays a page that that shows front-end monitoring option enabled.

2. If you select Front-end monitoring as one of the properties to be configured, a page is displayed that gives you the option to disable or enable front-end monitoring.

Availability monitoring for Outlook Web Access, Outlook Mobile Access, and Exchange ActiveSync functions only on Exchange 2003 front-end servers. When you select the Enable Front-End server monitoring check box in the Configuration Wizard, availability monitoring is enabled.

To monitor availability, a synthetic logon process is used, in which a user logging on to a mailbox using a mobility client is simulated. To enable a synthetic logon, there must be a test mailbox with a user account. For the Outlook Web Access logon, the Configuration Wizard automatically picks one of the existing back-end test mailboxes used by MAPI logon. This mailbox name is automatically stored in the \\HKLM\Software\Exchange MOM\FEMonitoring\<front-end servername>\BEAccount registry value on the front-end server. For more information, see the section "Configuring the Environment for Monitoring Outlook Web Access Front-End Servers" later in this topic.

The Mailbox Access account mailbox is used for Outlook Mobile Access and Exchange ActiveSync logon.

By default, the Exchange Management Pack automatically determines the URL used to monitor the front-end services by using a combination of localhost/network card IP and the virtual server and virtual directory information in the Internet Information Services (IIS) metabase. This URL is the local monitoring URL because the logon request is submitted to the local front-end server, where the logon request is generated.

You can also supply a custom URL to monitor the public URL that is used by your Web and mobile clients. This must be a URL that an end-user can use to log on. This logon request that is submitted to the custom URL can be responded to by any one of the organization's front-end servers that normally respond to requests to the specified URL. The public URL monitoring cannot be directed to monitor a specific server.

To use a custom URL, you will have to configure registry entries on each server where you want the monitoring enabled. Follow these steps to configure a custom URL for the client types.

To configure a custom URL for Outlook Web Access, do the following:

• Open Registry Editor and locate the \\HKLM\Software\Exchange MOM\FEMonitoring\<front-end servername>\ key and create a registry value (type string) named CustomUrls. Enter the custom URL value as a comma-delimited list in this value. For example:

  For single URLs:

  • https://www.example.com/exchange

  For multiple URLs:

  • https://www.example.com/exchange, https://www.example.com/mail

Note

Do not append the mailbox name in the URL, such as https://www.example.com/exchange/johnsmith, or the synthetic logon will fail.

To configure a custom URL for Outlook Mobile Access, do the following:

• Open Registry Editor and locate the \\HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Exchange MOM\FEMonitoring\<front-end servername>\ key and create a registry value (type string) named CustomOmaUrls. Enter the custom URL value as a comma-delimited list in this registry value. For example,

  For a single URL:

  • https://www.example.com/oma

  For multiple URLs:

  • https://www.example.com/oma, https://www.example.com/mobile

To configure a custom URL for Exchange ActiveSync, do the following:

• Open Registry Editor and browse to the \\HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Exchange MOM\FEMonitoring\<front-end servername>\ key and create a registry value (type string) named CustomEasUrls. Enter the custom URL value in this registry value. For example:

  • https://www.example.com/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync

Configuring the Environment for Monitoring Outlook Web Access Front-End Servers

When you choose to monitor an Outlook Web Access front-end server, you can specify the name of the mailbox to be used for monitoring in the XML configuration file (as shown in the container objects column in the following table). Every time that you enable monitoring of a front-end server, the Configuration Wizard searches for an account to use in the following order until an appropriate account is found:

• Back-end servers that are in the same routing group and were selected in the wizard for monitoring

• Back-end servers that are in the same routing group but were not selected in the wizard for monitoring

• Back-end servers that are in a different routing group and were selected in the wizard for monitoring

• Back-end servers that are in a different routing group but were not selected in the wizard for monitoring

Note

The Mailbox Access account is always used to monitor Outlook Mobile Access and Exchange ActiveSync.

Editing the Configuration File

This section describes the configuration file that is used to configure the Exchange Management Pack.

The configuration file is an XML file that lets users use the Exchange Management Pack Configuration Wizard to control configuration options. It also lets users script the configuration and view a report of the current configuration options.

The following table lists the container objects in a configuration file.

Container Object	Description
AdministrativeGroup	This node is a container object for <Servers> elements. It also has an <AdministrativeGroupName> element. The AdministrativeGroupName element contains the name of an administrative group as displayed by Exchange System Manager. There must be exactly one instance of the AdministrativeGroupName element and exactly one instance of the Servers element. Parent: AdministrativeGroups.
AdministrativeGroups	This node is a container object for the list of administrative groups in the configuration. It must contain at least one <AdministrativeGroup> element. Parent: Configuration.
BackEnd	This node is a container object for the configuration options that can be set for a back-end Exchange server: <ServerName>, <MonitorMessageTracking>, <ServicesToMonitor>, <MailBoxAccessAccount>, <MDBAvailabilityMonitoring>, and <MailFlowMonitoring>. The ServerName object contains the fully qualified domain name (FQDN) or the NetBIOS name of the server as a string. The MonitorMessageTracking object contains a Boolean value that specifies whether Message Tracking is enabled. The other three objects are container objects for other configuration elements. For an input configuration file, each BackEnd node must contain either zero or one instance of each of these objects. The only exception is the ServerName element. Each BackEnd instance must contain exactly one instance of the ServerName element. For the other elements, not specifying an element means that it will not be configured. An output report must contain exactly one instance of each of these objects. Parent: Servers
Configuration	This is the root node for the XML file. It can contain one child object, the <AdministrativeGroups> object, which is a container object for AdministrativeGroup configuration information. There must be at least one AdministrativeGroup object. There can be more than one AdministrativeGroup object. Parent: None
FrontEnd	This node is a container element for configuration information for a front-end Exchange server. It must contain exactly one <ServerName> element, which is a string that contains the FQDN of the server. It can also contain <ServicesToMonitor>, <FrontEndAvailabilityMonitoring>, <MailBoxAccessAccount>, and <MonitorMessageTracking> objects (previously defined). Parent: Servers
MailBoxAccessAccount	This node contains the account information for the MailBoxAccessAccount for the current server. It contains <username> and <domain> elements, which are strings and contain the user name and domain name of the Mailbox Access account, respectively. This object is used only in the output configuration report and is ignored when importing a configuration file. The user is prompted to enter a user name and password for the Mailbox Access account when the tool is run from the command line. Parent: BackEnd and FrontEnd
MailFlowMonitoring	This node contains four elements: <ExpectMailFrom>, <SendMailToServer>, <SendMailToMailbox>, and <TestMailBox>. ExpectMailFrom and SendMailToServer are repeating string elements. They contain the NetBIOS name of the server they are expecting mail from, or are supposed to send mail to, respectively. SendMailToMailbox is used to specify custom mailboxes (instead of servers) to which the server is supposed to send messages. This element lets users use "custom test mailboxes." When using SendMailToMailbox, it is mandatory to add <SendMailToServer>Custom</SendMailToServer> to the mail flow configuration, otherwise no mail flow message will be sent to the user mailboxes. There can be multiple instances of all elements. TestMailBox, an optional element that can be used to send/receive mail flow messages, should be specified whenever using customer mailboxes to monitor mail flow. Parent: BackEnd
MDBAvailabilityMonitoring	This node contains <MDBToMonitor> objects. The MDBToMonitor object contains the configuration of each MDB. If it is empty, it means that the configuration will disable MAPI logon availability. Parent: BackEnd
MDBToMonitor	This node contains three elements, <StorageGroup>, <MDBName>, and <TestMailBox>, that specify information about an MDB. The first two elements are required and one instance of each element must exist under this node. The TestMailBox element can be present, but it is not required. If it is present, this name is used for the mailbox monitoring account. If not, the default naming scheme is used. Parent: MDBAvailabilityMonitoring
Servers	This node is a container object for <BackEnd> and <FrontEnd> objects. FrontEnd and BackEnd objects contain the configuration information for front-end or back-end servers, respectively. There can be multiple instances of the FrontEnd and the BackEnd objects under the server container. No other elements can be in the Servers container object. Parent: AdministrativeGroup
ServicesToMonitor	This node contains the services to monitor. It contains the <ServiceName> element, which is a string and contains the system name of the service to monitor; for example, SMTPSVC or MSExchangeIS, not Simple Mail Transfer Protocol or Microsoft Exchange Information Store service. This is a repeating element (). Parent: FrontEnd or BackEnd

Note

The MailBoxAccessAccount elements are ignored when importing the configuration file. They are used only for output reporting.

See the topic Sample Configuration File Format for a sample file that enables customer front-end monitoring.