Free/busy information takes a long time to populate and CAS server logs event 4004
We are in a mixed exchange 2003 sp2 and exchange 2007 environment. All clients are Outlook 2007 sp1. Public folders are being replicated to all exchange 2003 and 2007 servers. Many users with exchange 2007 mailboxes complained that free/busy information for exchange 2003 users takes a long time to populate (5-10minutes). I checked eventvwr in the CAS/HT server and noticed frequent MSAvailabilityService warnings with ID 4004 that indicates that availability service was unable to find a public folder server for OU. The warnings are about two different exchange 2003 administrative groups, we have a total of 5 administrative groups. Process 4016[w3wp.exe:/LM/W3SVC/1/ROOT/EWS-1-128705958325259628]: Unable to find a public folder server for organizational unit (OU) US01 ADMINISTRATIVE GROUP. The service will attempt to find a random server, which may take a longer time to service the request. What steps should I take to troubleshoot this issue? Any help will be appreciated.
November 12th, 2008 2:59am

Hi, Please follow the steps below to troublshoot the issue. 1. Install Update Rollup 2 for Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1. 2. Locate the Web.config file in the following folder: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\Owa 3. Open the Web.config file in Notepad. 4. Add the following element in the <appSettings> section: <add key="MaximumDatabasesInQuery" value="250" /> Note The value of the MaximumDatabasesInQuery key indicates the number of public folders that must be available for your organization. The default value is 100. 5. Save the Web.config file. 6. Perform steps 3 through 5 to make the same change to the Web.config file in the following folder: %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft\Exchange Server\ClientAccess\EWS Besides, lets refer to article Looking up Free/Busy information in a mixed org (E2K3/E2k7) will return a 4004 error to have a high level overviewon what happens when an Outlook client makes a Free/Busy request. Id like to excerpt the process from the article and post here. 1. The Outlook 2007 client communicates with the Availability service for a Free/Busy request. 2. We will see if this is an Exchange 2007 mailbox and if it is the availability service will communicate directly with the users mailbox. If this is a legacy user we need to look up the user in the active directory so we can see what public folder store he has his data on. 3. The Availability service makes a query for that users legacyExchangeDN andhomeServer attribute. 4. At this point we will make a connection to that server for the user in question. 5. Lookupthe public folder server for this organizational unit - (Admin Group). 6. Look in our cache and report how many server objects we have that can be used. 7. Pick a random server from the list. 8. Check to see if we can communicate with this server. If we can not this server then gets added to the badServers list. 9. Make another query for another server. 10. At this point we will look for any server from any organizational unit - (Admin Group). Since this server might not contain the data that we are looking for add them to the badServers list as well. 11. As a last resort we look through the entire list and pick any server we can and then clear the badServers list. Hope it helps. Xiu
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November 14th, 2008 1:40am

Would this web config modify work for Exchange 2010? We have a mixed 2003 and 2010 environment experiencing similar problems. Jessica Cochran
September 12th, 2011 9:39pm

@Izbit2011: yesBenoit Boudeville - Avanade France & Belux Microsoft Certified Master - Office Communications Server 2007/R2 http://unifiees.blogspot.com
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December 1st, 2011 9:49am

I can vouch that this works in 2010. We just implemented with a PF infrastructure of 236. We were also recomended to go to a "full mesh" where all PF's were replicated locally to a 2010 box within the same site. We are still facing other issues unfortuneatly.
March 20th, 2012 4:14pm

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