what URL (or UNC??) do EV Placeholders point at?

[Mikeydee135]

Hi

Probably an easy one though i'm surprised not to find it anywhere online:

i would like to verify which URL or path is being hardocded into the shortcuts which are being created and i cannot find a place to see this. i cannot find the properties of the placeholder, nor anywhere this would be defined in the server itself.

my users are unable to open archived emails from outseide of the office, when originally testing this was possible, in my mind either DNS or EV settings have been changed. hopefully the former. but i can't be sure of anything untiull i know what is trying to be opened from Outlook. it all works within OWA which is confusing me.

Thanks guys

Mike

[JesusWept3]

Check out this utility http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897440

[TonySterling]

You use the term Placeholder, which refers to File System Archiving, but I am pretty sure you are talking about shortcut in Outlook that you are unable to open when connected via Outlook Anywhere.  Is that right?

Highlight one of the archived items and then open up Client diagnostics, (Hold the Ctrl+Shift keys and click on any of the EV icons),  you can then click the Vault Information tab and it will tell what URL is looking for.

[JesusWept3]

lol, yeah i should read more carefully :)
Shortcuts themselves dont actually contain a URL, only the hardcoded links in the banners do.

Short answer is that it will go to the EV Server that has the Vault Store your archive is located on, and NOT the site URL or the server that has your exchange archiving task on.

The way Enterprise Vault determines what URL it will use is via the Hidden Message, so it will look at the hidden message in your Exchange Mailbox, and look at the server name for the server that looks after the vault store.

So lets say you have the following

ExchServerA - This is the server your mailbox is hosted on
EVServer01 - Has the Exchange Mailbox Archiving Task for ExchServerA
EVServer02 - Has yourVaultStore - Vault Store Ptn 1 - this is where your archive is stored.

Although the task that archives your Exchange Server is on EVServer01, the Outlook Add In will send all its http/https requests to http://evserver02/EnterpriseVault/ due to the fact that this is the server that looks after your Vault Store server

[FreKac2]

So when you say they are outside the office are you saying you're using Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP) or through a VPN connection ?

If the former have you changed anything in the policy in regard to the RPC over HTTP settings or reconfigured the firewall?

[Mikeydee135]

Hi Tony

Thanks for the sugestion. you are correct, i'm refering to outlook VS Outlook Anywhere (many of our staff are often out in the field - or ocean). unfortunately i'v found that holding CTRL+ Shift when i click on an EV icon doesnt do anything, if i do the same and double click then it opens the mail normally. have i missed something?

Thanks

Mike

[Mikeydee135]

Hi JesusWept

is there a way to view the hidden message to see what's contained?

Primarily i'd like to know if it's an external or an internally resolvable name. this works on VPN and on the LAN anywhere globally (except some partner offices with unfortunate proxy settings - another issue) but Outlook via RPC/HTTP can't deal with it. the makes me afraid that it's an internal URL.

when we implemented this a few months ago we brought in a contractor to install and configure the application. i know that he asked me to create an internal CNAME for what could be an externally resolvable URL which i was under the impression was so that the externally available links would also work internally. this was working but is not any more, before i start any indepth research i want to verify that all roads do actually lead to Rome and all paths are resolvable.

Thanks for you help so far.

Mike

[JesusWept3 · Accepted solution]

Well what you should look at is your desktop policies and the RPC over http URL and make sure that it is valid and that the /EnterpriseVault web directory is published properly Once outlook opens and it detects its in RPC over http mode it will check first to see if it can contact the EV server via the internal http URL so as to make interactions quicker if you are still inside the network, if it doesn't resolve then it will go to the RPC over http URL as for the hidden message, what tony suggested is the best way and that is to hold Ctrl and press one of the EV icons (not a shortcut, but the store in vault button) and you will then get the EV log come up Or you can go to help -> about enterprise vault -> tech information and it will give you everything you need to know about your clients configuration settings

[Mikeydee135]

Hi JesusWept.

So I was clicking on the archived emails and not an icon thanks for the correction. i now have a lot of information, this includes many urls, the majority are fully qualified internal domain names... howerver there is one which i hope is my saving grace

RPCOVERHTTPCALCPROXYURL    https://ExternalExchangeAddress/enterprisevaultproxy

so if this does exactly what it says on the tin then this is the relevant key for me, this seems correct, or at least reasonable.

our structure:

https://ExternalExchangeAddress points at our Exchange server and, when browsed wil lredirect to

https://ExternalExchangeAddress/exchange which is our OWA url, sat on the Exchange server. I can uathenticate to this using my usual domain credentials, great!

To me this implies DNS and Firewalls are NOT to blame.

https://ExternalExchangeAddress/enterprisevaultproxy - I can browse this from the exchange box, from my local machine on the LAN or from my local machine not on the WAN but on a direct internet connection. if i browse to it i am asked to log on. if i try my user credentials, or my domain admin credentials (for good measure) it will not accept these. It looks as though there is an issue with the authentication, I'm not sure what i was expecting to see when i browse this site in a browser but i wasn't hoping for a 403 forbidden, which is what i received. Do you have any idea what might be wrong to cause this?

Thanks

Mike