Re: [Evolution] [ANNOUNCE] Evolution-EWS (Exchange Web Services) Alpha release

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Wed, 2011-04-27 at 16:08 +0100, David Woodhouse wrote:
> On Wed, 2011-04-27 at 10:10 +0100, Pete Biggs wrote:
> > The other thing that I think might have confused things was that I
> > initially put in my "real" email address and not the
> > username exchange server add on the first screen.  As I said, it's all
> > working now so it's difficult for me to categorically say what the
> > issues are - or even file bugs against it.
>
> Actually it's supposed to be your *real* email address.

The problem with our setup is that the real address is aliased to the
Exchange address before Exchange even sees the email.  So my email
address of pete biggs unit xx yy zz is aliased to my exchange address of
pbiggs exchange xx yy zz before it hits the exchange server - indeed my
exchange address works perfectly happily as a "real" email address, we
are just firmly encouraged not to use them.

> So in my case I enter 'david woodhouse intel com". When I then hit the
> 'Fetch URL' button to do the autodiscovery, it follows the instructions
> at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee332364.aspx â which are
> basically:
>   - Construct an XML request
>   - Try posting it to https://intel.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml
>   - If that fails, try posting it to https://autodiscover.intel.com/...

So the two URLs of unit.xx.yy.zz/autodiscover/... or
autodiscover.unit.xx.yy.zz don't exist, however
exchange.xx.yy.zz/autodiscover/... does exist.

> This autodiscover stuff is all a bit of a mess, and I suspect it's often
> not set up correctly. If you find it misbehaving, it would be very
> useful if you could try to work out what's wrong, and if there's
> something in http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee332364.aspx that
> we *should* be doing, that we're not.

The bottom line is that entering an email address of
pete biggs unit xx yy zz results in no response when clicking on the
"Fetch URL" button - I have the Debug traces and it looks like Evo just
keeps sending the same request but not getting any response.  Conversely
putting pbiggs exchange xx yy zz gets the correct URL back and
everything works.

I have no doubt that the setup at my work is bizarre so I doubt it is
worth it, or even possible, to alter the code to accommodate it.

Finally, you've labeled this as an Alpha release - do you have any idea
of the timescale for getting it to beta and ultimately to stable?

P.