This is a problem that has dogged me since May, on two different Exchange deployments that I did not set up. It is a complicated problem, and I will form my description carefully to help.
Parameters:
1) Exchange 2003, SP2 being accessed by Outlook 2007 Clients
2) The problem only occurs for recipients who have an AD account AND an external email address in the mix; either through an Exchange External Contact or by hand-addressing the appointment with the external address
3) Only Calendar emails are delayed then timed out, regular mail flows normally to same recipients
4) The AD account does not need to be mail-enabled for the problem to exist.
Longhand the behavior amounts to Calendar emails (appointment sets, updates, & deletes) to certain recipients only end up in the Exchange outbound Retry queues until they time out.
We have isolated this to only those messages that have recipients who have both an AD account and traffic to an external mail address either through a forward to an Exchange External Contact object or by having the appointment addressed directly to the external email account.
The problem to be solved:
We need to have logins for external collaborators to access SharePoint and Exchange mailboxes. We often need to forward Exchange mailbox traffic to their outside email addresses (hence the external contact items).
I'd be happy to solve the root issue, but if we can find another way to accomplish having AD access and Calendar emails that go to offsite email addresses, that would be almost as good.
The issue seems to be tied somehow to First Name / Last Name within Exchange. I say that because even a non-email enabled AD account can trigger the problem by virtue of addressing the Calendar appointment to someone with the same name as the AD account. Best I can figure it is something borked up in the original deploy/config (both done by same contractor) as none of our other Exchange 2003 servers have this issue despite using many External Contacts for this purpose.
Thank you for your time and attention
Parameters:
1) Exchange 2003, SP2 being accessed by Outlook 2007 Clients
2) The problem only occurs for recipients who have an AD account AND an external email address in the mix; either through an Exchange External Contact or by hand-addressing the appointment with the external address
3) Only Calendar emails are delayed then timed out, regular mail flows normally to same recipients
4) The AD account does not need to be mail-enabled for the problem to exist.
Longhand the behavior amounts to Calendar emails (appointment sets, updates, & deletes) to certain recipients only end up in the Exchange outbound Retry queues until they time out.
We have isolated this to only those messages that have recipients who have both an AD account and traffic to an external mail address either through a forward to an Exchange External Contact object or by having the appointment addressed directly to the external email account.
The problem to be solved:
We need to have logins for external collaborators to access SharePoint and Exchange mailboxes. We often need to forward Exchange mailbox traffic to their outside email addresses (hence the external contact items).
I'd be happy to solve the root issue, but if we can find another way to accomplish having AD access and Calendar emails that go to offsite email addresses, that would be almost as good.
The issue seems to be tied somehow to First Name / Last Name within Exchange. I say that because even a non-email enabled AD account can trigger the problem by virtue of addressing the Calendar appointment to someone with the same name as the AD account. Best I can figure it is something borked up in the original deploy/config (both done by same contractor) as none of our other Exchange 2003 servers have this issue despite using many External Contacts for this purpose.
Thank you for your time and attention
