Exchange Setup/iPhone 2.0

If any windows smartphone or Pocket PC quickly and reliably connect to MS Exchange server 2003 SP1 or newer, why would Apple force Companies to upgrade to SP2 or higher in order to use the iPhone?

My company's IT department wants no part in upgrading the Exchange server as they are "busy" with other tasks. They will offer no help in getting my iphone to connect.

Why can't apple provide instructions or a patch to allow the use of EAS 2003 SP1 ?

This feature is one of the most touted improvements on the iphone from 1G to 3G. In a way I feel cheated as I cannot use this feature..... PRECISELY the reason why I bought the iPhone 3G !

I have submitted a support ticket for this issue, and it has gone all the way to "Apple Engineering", their reply was that they cannot help with my server settings. They claim the problem is not the iphone.

Seems to me that there is lots of folks in the same boat. Our time is running out as August 11th is last day to return the device. I urge Apple to reconsider by providing a solution to this issue, surely an oversight in Apple's plan.

It sounds as if you upgraded from the first iPhone to an iPhone 3g. I would like to remind you that you did not need to upgrade your phone's hardware to get this touted feature. You could have just upgraded your 1st gen iPhone to the 2.0 firmware and test it out. If you bought this, your first, iPhone based solely on exchange that is a different story and apologize for confusing your words. I too am in a similar situation, it is clear that not being able to work with SP1 is the issue at my university, despite every other smart phone being able to connect using activesync. It is ridiculous that they crippled the phone in this manner. If someone knows a way around this, or can explain the critical difference between sp1 and sp2, please let us know I think it will help many many people fixing their exchange issues with their IT dept.

SOLUTION?

I noticed that when I login to OWA, I do not need to supply a domain. So instead of setting my username to "DOMAIN\username" or "domain\username" (tried both over and over), I finally tried just "username" and my password. Works like a charm for me.

I am NOT an exchange administrator, I have no idea how my company configured exchange or why this works.

But it works for me--I hope it works for you.

OK so if you have access to the IIS logs in the Exchange server you should be able to get a lot of clues as noted by other users. The 1st thing to get right is make sure that you can login to the OMA (Outlook Mobile Access) URL via any browser. In our shop it's http://domain.org/oma.

If you can't login the Exchange system admin will need to follow the steps in http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=817379. We also were getting the "A System error has occurred while processing your request" error message so we followed http://support.microsoft.com/kb/898131/ and voila OMA via a browser began to work.

Well the iPhone 3G was getting this message every time we tried to send/receive mail:
Cannot Send Mail
An error occurred while delivering this message.

So we took a look at the IIS log. Notice with the iPhone 3G user his log entry:
with SSL disabled:
2008-08-06 15:03:55 W3SVC1 10.0.x.x OPTIONS /oma/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync - 80 someone 32.136.48.40 Apple-iPhone/502.108 200 0 0
with SSL enabled:
2008-08-06 15:05:40 W3SVC1 10.0.x.x OPTIONS /oma/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync - 443 someone 32.136.48.40 Apple-iPhone/502.108 200 0 0

Hmm what's different from using OMA via the browser successfully?
2008-08-06 15:09:02 W3SVC1 10.0.225.241 PROPFIND /exchange-oma/someonelse/ - 80 xxx\someonelse 10.0.225.241 - 207 0 0

Yep the path is "exchange-oma" and NOT "oma". Hmmm. Lo and behold what could it be?

Well in the domain field of said iPhone 3G we had 'http://domain.org/oma' thinking, well "that's how we get in via a regular ole' web browser". Ha so much for that thinking. We took out the '/oma' and voila. Action Jackson.

Bottom line: logs are your (sys admin's) friend...

Hi- I was having exactly the same problem- it was solved when I stopped adding my companydomain name in the username part and just put my username- for some reason that made all the difference. Try it and see and let me know if you then get duplicate and triplicate contacts on your iphone- i sure am.

OK .. I opened my IIS logs and I tested both my iPhone (not syncing) and an HTC 'smart phone' (that is syncing) and I saw some strange behavior.

First of. The iPhone is using MKCOL (I don't know what that is) instead of GET. If some one can see what's wrong with my server from this information, please let me know!

So the iPhone calls the server like this:

2008-08-06 18:31:18 192.168.x.x PROPFIND /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/iPhone/Appl7R7343VDWH8 - 80 - 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 401 1 0
2008-08-06 18:31:18 192.168.x.x PROPFIND /exchange-oma/maggi/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/iPhone/Appl7R7343VDWH8 - 80 SERVER\username 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 404 0 0
2008-08-06 18:31:18 192.168.x.x MKCOL /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync - 80 - 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 401 2 2148074254
2008-08-06 18:31:18 192.168.x.x MKCOL /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync - 80 - 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 401 1 0
2008-08-06 18:31:18 192.168.x.x MKCOL /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync - 80 SERVER\username 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 404 0 0
2008-08-06 18:31:18 192.168.x.x POST /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync User=maggi&DeviceId=Appl7R7343VDWH8&DeviceType=iPhone&Cmd=FolderSync&Log=V4TNAS NC:0A0C0D0FS:0A0C0D0SP:2C2I671S1588R0S0L0H0P 443 SERVER\username 192.168.x.x Apple-iPhone/501.347 500 0 0

But the HTC phone looks like this:

2008-08-06 19:21:28 192.168.x.x PROPFIND /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/SmartPhone/DD2FA0A2A50AA19A3BFA7183061E7774 - 80 - 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 401 1 0
2008-08-06 19:21:28 192.168.x.x PROPFIND /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/SmartPhone/DD2FA0A2A50AA19A3BFA7183061E7774 - 80 SERVER\username 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 207 0 0
2008-08-06 19:21:28 192.168.x.x GET /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/SmartPhone/DD2FA0A2A50AA19A3BFA7183061E7774/ 9c6cec675327744f8db87488c8e44cc2-1c65 - 80 - 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 401 2 2148074254
2008-08-06 19:21:28 192.168.x.x GET /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/SmartPhone/DD2FA0A2A50AA19A3BFA7183061E7774/ 9c6cec675327744f8db87488c8e44cc2-1c65 - 80 - 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 401 1 0
2008-08-06 19:21:28 192.168.x.x GET /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/SmartPhone/DD2FA0A2A50AA19A3BFA7183061E7774/ 9c6cec675327744f8db87488c8e44cc2-1c65 - 80 SERVER\username 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 200 0 0
2008-08-06 19:21:28 192.168.x.x SEARCH /exchange-oma/username/ - 80 - 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 401 1 0
2008-08-06 19:21:28 192.168.x.x SEARCH /exchange-oma/username/ - 80 SERVER\username 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 207 0 0
2008-08-06 19:21:28 192.168.x.x PUT /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/SmartPhone/DD2FA0A2A50AA19A3BFA7183061E7774/ 9c6cec675327744f8db87488c8e44cc2-1c65 - 80 - 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 401 1 0
2008-08-06 19:21:28 192.168.x.x PUT /exchange-oma/username/NON IPMSUBTREE/Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/SmartPhone/DD2FA0A2A50AA19A3BFA7183061E7774/ 9c6cec675327744f8db87488c8e44cc2-1c65 - 80 SERVER\username 192.168.x.x Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync/6.5.7638.1 200 0 0
2008-08-06 19:21:29 192.168.x.x POST /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync User=username&DeviceId=DD2FA0A2A50AA19A3BFA7183061E7774&DeviceType=SmartPhone&C md=Sync&Log=V4TEmSSC:0A0C0D0FS:1A0C0D1SP:1C4I6461S49524R0S0L0H0P 80 server.rollan.local\username 213.213.158.129 MSFT-SPhone/5.1.2300 200 0 0