[Evolution] Evo 2.0.4 problems with Exchange

[Ian Perryman <iperryma altera com>]

Bless me father for I have sinned .... it has been 2 years since I last used Evolution.

Since then I have been using Outlook.

2 years ago I gave up using evolution since the exchange server at my company was antiquated and there were many crashes of evolution.  

Now I have recently upgraded my system to FC3 and the company has updated their exchange servers.  And apparently Evolution has been upgraded quite a bti since then and now has a direct Exchange connection.  

So I am trying it out.

Here are some the things I have found so far.

Evo documentation is not well suited for people working in a corporate  environment that is based on Outlook.  I had great difficulty figuring out what to put in the configuration panels.  I am able to run both Evolution and Outlook simultaneously, but did not know where to get information from outlook to put into evolution.  For what it's worth, here is how I found some useful info from outlook:

To find my exchange server name, use Tools->Email Accounts...
In the dialog select radio button for "E-mail: View or change existing e-mail accounts"  click "Next"
Select "Microsoft Exchange Server"  click "Change"
In the resulting dialog, the Microsoft Exchange Server name should appear.


In the Evolution Mail Settings Dialog"Recieving Mail":

• Copy the server name discovered above to the Exchange Server field.
• Windows user name is the name you would use to log into Windows before using Outlook
• The security settings I used were "Use Secure Connection (SSL) Never"
• Authentication setting I used were "Secure Password"

>     The Receiving Options was a bit more challenging.
>     
>     To discover the Global Address List/ Active directory I had to open a new email message in outlook
>     I clicked on the "To:" button to get the "Select Names" dialog
>     I put "Show Names from the" to "Global Address List"
>     Then I right clicked on the "Global Address List" to get "properties"
>     This opened a dialog with the name of the Global Address List server and the path.  I did not need to use the path, just the server name.
>     
>     Now for the Exchange Server settings.  This I had to start outlook from a web browser using the Outlook Web Access(OWA) feature.  So got to any web browser and use url  http://your_exchange_server_name/exchange
>     (Replace "your_exchange_server_name" with the name you discovered above)
>     You may have to log in with your Windows credentials.
>     You should now see your mailboxes in the browser.
>     Right click over your "inbox" and select "properties"
>     A window should come up with the address to your inbox.
>     The path should look like  http://your_exchange_server_name/exchange/mailbox_name/inbox/?Cmd=contents&Page=1
>     My mailbox_name happens to look like an email address "iperryma altera com"
>     This mailbox_name is what you put in the "Mailbox name" field.
>     The OWA path is "/exchange"
>     If you have public folders visible in the OWA you can find the server name by right clicking and checking the properties.
>     
>     Then I had to set autocompletion to work with the exchange server Global Address List.  This was straight forward from the contacts view using settings for autocompletion and using the check boxes.
Once all this was figured out, evolution started to work sort of.  

I have experienced several crashes trying to send emails.  

camel-ERROR **: file camel-object.c: line 1894 (camel_object_bag_reserve): assertion failed: (res->owner != pthread_self())
aborting...

The other error I detected in this brief test of evolution is that a series of meetings scheduled in outlook where some of the individual meetings have been modified do not display properly in evolution.

Example:

1. Create a series of meetings in outlook (say 10 consecutive weeks on Friday at 10 am.)
2. Then modify say the third meeting by selecting it and double clicking (in the dialog select "this occurrence")
3. Change the day to the preceding Thursday.
4. Save
5. Check the calendar in Evolution.  Notice that the third meeting is still on Friday.

Ian Perryman



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--
Ian Perryman <iperryma altera com>