Using Exchnage for Internal Mail and external mail recipients 2

[moonpig]

I support a company that has both internal staff and external sales people. At the moment they all have their own individual POP3 mailbox and the exchange server is configured as a POP3 server to download and distribute only the internal office staff's email. The sales people use their own POP3 mail client (Outlook Express or Outlook) to download their own email.
We will be changing thier mail delivery to an SMTP feed soon and are not sure of the best way to implement this for the external sales team. They need to be able to download thier email to their laptops as before and not use Outlook Web Access.

What is the best way of doing this? Can Exchange be setup to receive all emails bound sent to their domain name but forward specific ones to its virtual POP3 server for collection by the sales team? I dont want to forward emails to the sales team to another email address.
Can the sales team connect to the server through the internet and access it in the same way as any other POP3 server?

Thanks for any advice!

 

[FilthPig]

Your external people will be able to connect to your exchange server as a pop3 server as long as there's a path to it. If you're behind a firewall (please be behind a firewall!) you can NAT port 110 from an external IP address to your exchange server. You will want to make sure you have a static IP for this. If your server's directly on the internet with a public IP, then your sales people can get to it via pop3 through the internet - but you really should get a firewall if you don't have one.

Marc Creviere

 

[forbsy]

Try implementing RPC over HTTP:

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/2003/library/ex2k3rpc.mspx

We use it and it's great.

Forbsy

 

[moonpig]

Thanks guys,

I think I'll continue with the POP3 as its more ideal for what the sales people need. I had a look at the RPC/HTTP idea and as far as I can see it works much the same as Outlook Web Access, so it doesnt give a copy for use offline.

Thanks again, any more idea's are more than welcome!

 

[forbsy]

On the contrary. RPC over HTTP is only similar to OWA in that it utilizes HTTP. The difference is that you use your regular MAPI Outlook client to connect. Also Outlook 2003 has a feature that allows you to store a copy of your mailbox locally (during initial synchronization). With RPC over HTTP your clients Outlook experience is identical to those on the LAN, with the same e-mail client. You really should investigate it a little more. I think it's what you're looking for.

Forbsy