Hi All I have been migrating mailboxes and at the time have 2003 outlook clients so needs to us PF for FB info. I am now at a point where the clients are all 2007 and I need to decommisson the PF for Free/ BusyCan anyone help point me in the direction on transfering the FB role to Availability Service and a CAS and decom the dedicatedPF server. Is there anything I need to be aware of? Should the Availability service actually run as a service in services or is it just a web service?Thanks for any help

Nothing much you need to take care because Availability service should be configured during Exchange setup to work with Outlook 2007 free busy information via web services. You can verify that it is working correctly... How to Diagnose Availability Service Issues http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124805.aspx Also you can shutdown PF server for couple of days to verify thateverythingworks fine when it goes down. Then whiledecommissioning PF server, remove PF database as per "Removing the Last Public Folder Database From an Organization" session in below article... Removing Public Folder Databases http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc164367.aspx Also use -RemoveLastAllowed switch to remove PF DB.... Remove-PublicFolderDatabase "Identity of PF Database" -RemoveLastAllowedAmit Tank | MVP Exchange Server | MCITP: EMA | MCSA: M | http://ExchangeShare.WordPress.com

Thanks Amitcan you just confirm"Availability service should be configured during Exchange setup to work with Outlook 2007 free busy information via web services"Is this auto configured during default install or is there some manual config to dothanks

If you are planning for External Autodiscover service with Outlook Anywhere then you may need to define ExternalURL otherwise for internal clients it is configured during setup... Configure Exchange Services for the Autodiscover Service http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb201695.aspxAmit Tank | MVP Exchange Server | MCITP: EMA | MCSA: M | http://ExchangeShare.WordPress.com

Hi, The Availability service should be able to work for internal domain joined Outlook 2007 client to retrieve Free/Busy status. Nevertheless, as Amit explained, if you need to have Outlook Anywhere client to work, you need to perform some further configuration: 1. Configure Availability service external URL (By default, the external URL is not configured) 2. Configure DNS in order to have Outlook Anywhere client is able to contact Autodiscover service to obtain the Availability service URL. 3. Configure appropriate Certificate on the Web Site. Mike