As we struggle to get Entourage working with hosted Exchange 2003 at Applix.com, here are the problems we have and the solutions aren’t simple and aren’t documented. Fortunately, someone at Applix.com helpdesk knows what they are doing
# The good news is that basic email and blackberry seem to work great. Unlike our experience with Kerio.
# The other good news is that calendar free/busy, delegation and sharing of calendars works great with Outlook 2007 as a client
# The bad news is that calendar delegation and sharing seem to have strange problems with Entourage 2008 which requires a very strange set of fixes that someone at Applix somehow knew but which is not documented.
h3. Calendar Delegation
First use Outlook 2003 or 2007 to setup delegates. Each user logons and goes to Email Accounts/Delegates and makes someone a delegatee
Then go to Entourage 2008 or 2004 and here is the magic instructions. The real key here is that because hosted Exchange has a real underlying email name like rich.abc@atlarge.net but it knows how to map that to a virtual name like rich@coolco.com. So in order to get this to work, you have to do this magic sequence. It is kind of amazing, but you actually press enter and then in about 30 seconds, calendars appear:
# Start Outlook and go to each user’s account. You have to logon separately for each user and select the delegatee
# Start Entourage as the delegatee and select Tools/Accounts
# Double click on the Exchange account
# Now click on Delegates and click on the Advanced button in the section called “Users I am a Delegate For…”
# Enter the name like Rich Tong
# Enter their virtual email address that you know them by like rich@coolco.com
# Here is the trick that only works for Applix’s Exchange 2003 hosting, then you enter a magic URL that helps Entourage figure out where rich@coolco.com’s real email address is, _https://owa.atlarge.net/exchange/rich.abc@atlarge.net/
# As soon as you hit OK, things start happening and you can type but suddenly, you will see rich@coolco appear in the calendar area and then the calendar appears. Cool!
