knritk   0 pts.  |   Apr 30 2007  3:03AM GMT

1) Is local m/c joined in domain?
Yes
2) IMAP service is running on exchange servcer OR not?
It is not running
3) DNS servcer configuration/
yes

dwiebesick   1760 pts.  |   Apr 30 2007  10:23AM GMT

In configuring your SBS, did you use the wizards that are part of the SBS, or did you manually configure the server?

According to Microsoft, use of the SBS wizards in configuring the server is not optional, it is a ‘must’ in order to properly configure all the settings. Microsoft made the SBS to be ‘maintained’ by the business owner and to not ‘require’ system administrator.

If you did not use the wizards, I highly suggest you try that first.
dmw

knritk   0 pts.  |   Apr 30 2007  10:48AM GMT

I did use the wizards.

dwiebesick   1760 pts.  |   Apr 30 2007  2:51PM GMT

From what you said “ipconfig /displaydns I see the internal name of the exchange server ‘machine.name.local’ which can not be resolved” This is an indication that your DNS is not properly setup. I would go back to the ‘Connect to the Internet’ wizard. Else you can use dnsdiag from W2k3 resource kit and troubleshoot what when wrong in your configuration of DNS.
dmw

knritk   0 pts.  |   May 2 2007  12:30AM GMT

I re-ran the connect to internet wizard and discovered the mail server setting was set to <a href="http://name.org" title="http://name. " target="_blank">name.org</a> but according to the help it should be the name in the MX record so I changed it to <a href="http://mail.name.org" title="http://mail.name. " target="_blank">mail.name.org</a>. The configuration then completed with an an error “an error occurred while configuring a component …” I had to restart the exchange Info store, smtp and had to start all web sites. I reran the wizard several times and still got the same error. Funny thing is, exchange still works with OWA and internal outlook clients. The remote outlook client fails to check the name in the Mail configuration (from control pannel) now stating it can not connect with exchange (this occurs when I specified <a href="http://mail.name.org" title="http://mail.name. " target="_blank">mail.name.org</a>).
I’ve run dnsdiag and saw nothing peculiar and I also ran smtpdiag.exe with no errors.
I did read a couple of things: one about FE/BE servers and that the remote Outlook was looking for mail boxes on the FE and resorting to the BE which is the local machine. The other article (which I can’t find now) stated something about setting up the MX record in the forward lookup zones?
Thanks for all your help and I greatly appreciate further assistance.

shadyj   0 pts.  |   May 2 2007  8:47AM GMT

In order to connect to Exchange from offsite, you need to enable RPC or connect through VPN (Connect to Small Business Server). See <a href="http://www.petri.co.il/configure_outlook_2003_to_use_rpc_over_http.htm" title="http://www.petri.co.il/configure_outlook_2003_to_use_rpc_over_http.htm" target="_blank">http://www.petri.co.il/configure_outlook…</a> for more info.