How to configure HTC Touch Pro to receive company e-mail

[69L46]

An alternative is to use VPN access and then set up you mail account to connect to exchange (don't qualify the domain name so your phone realizes that it needs to connect to the VPN to connect). This works if your company uses the MS VPN, I don't know how to set it up for a 3rd party VPN server. With MS VPN, it can be configured for either password or certicate authorization. Also, your account must be in the group that has remote access provledges. So if you can do it by installing the OWA certificate on your phone, that is easier. Also, if you check pop mail, it will disconnect from the VPN. So its less reliable.

One reason your IT dept. may not support non-Blackberry devices is that in order to push e-mail to a Blackberry from exchange, the company has to buy a Blackberry-specific hardware device that connects to the exchange server. So they may simply not know how to do it - or if they supported other phones, the justification for the Blackberries and the Blackberry-Exchange hardware is harde4r to make.

[Mutiny32]

Originally Posted by mr.blonde

Prior posts were correct. If your company users Exchange, they will only allow company phones to connect. It is often a security risk to allow you to connect your phone. Even personal BlackBerry's are an issue.

There may be other options if your company is willing to configure it. In my case, we have Intellisync setup, so I can sync my phone with work email and calendar online. Push eats up my battery, so I just manually connect for email, but it works great.

But it's something that your company has to configure. I got lucky when the IT director got this software to support his phone, and I mentioned it to him so he gave me access.

That's not necessarily true. I could connect to my prior company's exchange system with my Touch without having to ask a soul to allow it. All you need are domain credentials and the OMA address.

Also, push shouldn't eat up battery. Push was designed so a mobile device wouldn't have to check-in for updates, thus waking up processes, data connections, and the like. The server tells your phone whenever a change occurs.

[chronster]

Same boat here. Blackberries are the phone of choice, and they have a limited number of licenses they issue only to upper management.

I can't get OWA to work on my touch pro, but whats really WEIRD is my Samsung Instinct could use the OWA address and get my mail just fine. It's amazing the instinct can do something the tp can't.

With the instinct, i just entered my name and password, the owa address, and selected secure connection or something and it auto configured everything. Impressive actually.

[tnynyn]

another option is using pop/imap if you cant get exchange to work...granted you lose push...

[igot5onitt]

Question: Does your company allow exchange access to everyone? An easy way to find out is to answer this... Do you have access to Outlook Web Access (usually something like owa.mycompany.com)?

Most companies will only grant exchange access if you have a company phone. The reason for this is that the company must pay for a license for each user accessing exchange.

Exchange is based off of the Active Directory.. users must be granted access to have exchange privileges. See if you can play with one of your coworker's company phones and find the mail server address.

Are you sure they are utilizing an exchange server and not just a standard pop/imap/smtp type config?

[igot5onitt]

Originally Posted by chronster

Same boat here. Blackberries are the phone of choice, and they have a limited number of licenses they issue only to upper management.

I can't get OWA to work on my touch pro, but whats really WEIRD is my Samsung Instinct could use the OWA address and get my mail just fine. It's amazing the instinct can do something the tp can't.

With the instinct, i just entered my name and password, the owa address, and selected secure connection or something and it auto configured everything. Impressive actually.

I had the same problem with my mogul when i first got it. the key was the username.. it had to have the domain\user name. like ppcgeeks\igot5onitt.

Hope this helps

[chronster]

Originally Posted by igot5onitt

I had the same problem with my mogul when i first got it. the key was the username.. it had to have the domain\user name. like ppcgeeks\igot5onitt.

Hope this helps

it's been so long since i've attempted it. Can you post full instructions?

[igot5onitt]

Originally Posted by chronster

it's been so long since i've attempted it. Can you post full instructions?

its been too long. just go thru the normal email setup... except put the user name in w/ the domain it is associated with. what part are u getting stuck on during initial setup?

[ac520]

I have configured this on Exchange 2003 running on Server 2003 and IIS6 as well as Exchange 2007 running on Server 2008 and IIS7. From an end-user perspective there is very little difference between these two versions.

First of all you obviously need an “Exchange” account (i.e. a user account in Active Directory that is mailbox enabled) but just as important, your account needs to have ActiveSync (Exchange 2007) or OMA (Exchange 2003) enabled. A non-scientific method of testing this is to attempt to logon to your company’s OWA site (i.e. web mail). In many cases, if a company has enabled web access for a user they have probably enabled ActiveSync /OMA access for the user. So if you believe you have an Exchange account that is OMA/ActiveSync enabled you will be able to configure your Windows Mobile device to sync with Exchange.

The next step is to determine if you need to use SSL to connect to your Exchange server. In most cases (if not all) you will need to enable SSL for the connection. If this is in fact the case you will then need to determine if the SSL cert used by your company is signed by a Root CA that is trusted by your Windows Mobile device. This is a tossup as many companies generate their own cert if they are on Exchange 2003 then force their workstation to trust the self-signed cert through Active Directory Group Policy. Again, a non-scientific method to determine this is to access your companies OWA web site and view the certificate via your web browser. The thing to check here is the “Issuer” on the Details tab. If you see your company’s name here they it is a self-signed cert and your Windows Mobile device will not trust the cert until you add the certificate to your Trusted Root CA store. There are a few ways to do this, the method I have used is to save a copy of the cert via Internet Explorer to my laptop hard drive then move it over to my phone’s storage card where it can be opened and saved to the cert store on the phone.
(I realize this OWA and OMA are two separate services and do not necessarily use the same cert but many organizations do use the same cert to either save a couple bucks if they have purchased their certs or to save a little time if they are using self-signed certs.)

Once you get to this point you can simply follow the ActiveSync wizard for adding an Exchange server on your phone. The information required for this is User Name (the name you use to access your company’s network) Password and Domain (this is the internal domain name your user account is a member of, which is typically (but not always) the “stuff” after the “@” and before “.com” in your email address)

Hope that helps.

[slopokdave]

Originally Posted by ac520

I have configured this on Exchange 2003 running on Server 2003 and IIS6 as well as Exchange 2007 running on Server 2008 and IIS7. From an end-user perspective there is very little difference between these two versions.

First of all you obviously need an “Exchange” account (i.e. a user account in Active Directory that is mailbox enabled) but just as important, your account needs to have ActiveSync (Exchange 2007) or OMA (Exchange 2003) enabled. A non-scientific method of testing this is to attempt to logon to your company’s OWA site (i.e. web mail). In many cases, if a company has enabled web access for a user they have probably enabled ActiveSync /OMA access for the user. So if you believe you have an Exchange account that is OMA/ActiveSync enabled you will be able to configure your Windows Mobile device to sync with Exchange.

The next step is to determine if you need to use SSL to connect to your Exchange server. In most cases (if not all) you will need to enable SSL for the connection. If this is in fact the case you will then need to determine if the SSL cert used by your company is signed by a Root CA that is trusted by your Windows Mobile device. This is a tossup as many companies generate their own cert if they are on Exchange 2003 then force their workstation to trust the self-signed cert through Active Directory Group Policy. Again, a non-scientific method to determine this is to access your companies OWA web site and view the certificate via your web browser. The thing to check here is the “Issuer” on the Details tab. If you see your company’s name here they it is a self-signed cert and your Windows Mobile device will not trust the cert until you add the certificate to your Trusted Root CA store. There are a few ways to do this, the method I have used is to save a copy of the cert via Internet Explorer to my laptop hard drive then move it over to my phone’s storage card where it can be opened and saved to the cert store on the phone.
(I realize this OWA and OMA are two separate services and do not necessarily use the same cert but many organizations do use the same cert to either save a couple bucks if they have purchased their certs or to save a little time if they are using self-signed certs.)

Once you get to this point you can simply follow the ActiveSync wizard for adding an Exchange server on your phone. The information required for this is User Name (the name you use to access your company’s network) Password and Domain (this is the internal domain name your user account is a member of, which is typically (but not always) the “stuff” after the “@” and before “.com” in your email address)

Hope that helps.

Good suggestions, I had a similar experience. I'm going to change the physical name of my Exchange OWA address to protect my company, but here is how mine works:

I access my Exchange email through my web browser at: http://email2003.companyname.com

- On my phone, server address is the same minus http://
- Check SSL
- My user name is the same user name I use to access my company network/email
-Domain is the latter part of the server address (i.e. companyname.com)

And thats it! Here's the deal that I don't get.... OWA is very secure, and the technology allows a company to delete the data on the device should the device be compromised. My company is verrrrrrrrrrry strict when it comes to compliance and regulations; we are monitored by the government. We can use Exchange email on our personal and work phones because of the security that OWA uses.

-Dave