Hi I am trying to do free/busy availability service between multiple forests. Problem is that the email suffixes for these domains is different from domain suffixes. For example: site 1 domain: Campus1.local email suffix On the Internet and inside: @campus1.edu would you please advise on how to handle this situation? With AvailabilityAddressSpace you can specify forest but that won't work when mail suffix is different. (I get error 4011 in event viewer saying domain not found) Thanks

Hi there, could you be a bit more specific please? Can you give some more background information on what you exactly did? What is your setup? etc.... You can also start by taking a look at this information: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb125182(EXCHG.140).aspx Michael

Hello There are a few campuses involved. They got Exchange 2007 and 2010 environments. All connected via MPLS or site to site VPN. I am almost done with first part of this nightmarish project which is the GAL sync. Took a while and required involvement of admins on all sites. Now the main part; which is the free/busy. I have read many articles including the one mentioned above. However they apply if the domain name and email suffix are the same (for example domain is contoso.com with email suffix of @contoso.com) Unfortunately it is not the case here. Email suffixes are different from the domain names. For example domain called campus1.local has an email address of @collegename.edu The free/busy doesn't work and I see event id 4011 in exchange logs indicating that collegename.edu domain/forest is not found. I have been googling and googling to no avail. Would you please help?

Kman, the fact that your internal domain doesn't match your smtp-domain should not matter. Free/Busy lookups are performed through autodiscover; so if your "partners" have configured that, it should work fine. If not, you can always export the SCP-config from their domain and import it into yours. Remember that you should run the Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace command for every smtp-domain. Michael

Are the Forests Trusted or untrusted? If it's Trusted you would run: Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace -Forestname Campus1.local -AccessMethod PerUserFB -UseServiceAccount:$true

hmmm. Thanks however... Domains are not trusted. I am getting 2 opposite answers here though in regard to add-availabilityaddressspace command. Shouldn't it be? --> Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace -Forestname Campus1.edu -AccessMethod PerUserFB -UseServiceAccount:$true I was under the impression (from the response above) that the entry right after the -forestname is the SMTPdomain and not the actual AD domain.

No it's not the SMTP address it's the AD domain. Have the Target forest run this command with an account to be used for Availability: Set-AvailabilityConfig -OrgWideAccount "target.com\User" Then in the Source domain run this: $a = get-credential (Enter the credentials for organization-wide user in Target.com domain) Add-AvailabilityAddressspace -Forestname target.com -Accessmethod OrgWideFB -Credential:$a

Have the Target forest run this command with an account to be used for Availability: Set-AvailabilityConfig -OrgWideAccount "target.com\User" Then in the Source domain run this: $a = get-credential (Enter the credentials for organization-wide user in Target.com domain) Add-AvailabilityAddressspace -Forestname target.com -Accessmethod OrgWideFB -Credential:$a

Yes the GAL sync is very hard to deploy and maintenance between forests. You are well done. You did not mention the Outlook version. If Outlook 2003 is used, make sure the interorg replication is working fine. Regarding the difference between user email address and the domain name, it is not a problem. The Availability Service uses AD to resolve all email addresses of attendees in the availability request to objects in AD. 2. If the recipient type of the object is a custom recipient (mail enabled contact), the request is proxied to an Availability Service in the target forest if it has been defined. Regarding the free/busy between forests, in untrusted forests, it isn't possible to control the level of free/busy information that's returned on a per-user basis. That means, we need to set an OrgWideAccount in the target forest that can retrieve the free/busy information. See Set-AvailabilityConfig at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124103(EXCHG.80).aspx and Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124122(EXCHG.80).aspx. Note: For untrusted cross-forest configuration, make sure that the user does not have a mailbox. Moreover, I would suggest we verify the following settings: 1. Can user can retrieve free/busy information in their own forest. 2. What is the exact experience your user has while trying to retrieve cross forest free/busy information? Any error message or symptoms? 3. What’s the name do you use for the Autodiscover URL and the Availablity service URL? Xxx.edu/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml or xxx.local/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml? 4. If you try the access the Autodiscover URL for the target forest via IE with the orgwideAccount, can you open it with code 600? Can you open the availability URL? 5. Do the certificates installed on each CAS server are trusted in the forests? 6. Is there any firewall between forests? 7. Did you add the DNS A records for both the Autodiscover URLs and Availability URLs in each forests? The Event ID shows DNS error (see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc774611(WS.10).aspx ). If incorrect, please describe the exact error message. For more detailed, see How to Configure the Availability Service for Cross-Forest Topologies at http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/04/3412075.aspx. Best regards, Fiona Liao Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

Hi Here are my input based on Fiona's comment. 1. So which way to go? Can I have it both? Use --> Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace -Forestname Campus1.edu -AccessMethod PerUserFB -UseServiceAccount:$true and do not use Campus1.local? This what I got from a technet blog! (http://blogs.technet.com/b/ucedsg/archive/2008/09/10/can-i-share-free-busy-information-between-two-exchange-2007-organizations.aspx)--> "The key here is to use the SMTP domain of the target Forest and NOT the actual Active Directory FQDN name" 2. Outlook 2003 won't be used 3. I do get message "600" when going to autodiscover sites 4. Certs are legit (verisigin, godaddy..) 5. I am getting more of Event ID 4001 . It says --> Exception returned is Microsoft.Exchange.InfoWorker.Common.Availability.AutoDiscoverFailedException: A cross-forest Availability service that can fill request for mailbox <campus1user1.>SMTP:campus1user1@campus1.edu could not be found.. This event may occur when Availability Service cannot discover an Availability Service in the remote forest. There is no trust so I am not sure if I can do export-autodiscovery method (SCP)

1. Yes, use the SMTP address. In this thread, use Campus1.edu. 2. Then we don’t need to copy the Public Folder which contains the free/busy information between forests. 3. So what is the URL? It is supposed to use the default Autodiscover autodiscover.targetforest.com, and use the SMTP address, that is Campus1.edu, not the Capus1.local. 4. It should be OK. Actually it is the best and recommended solution. We don't have to export and import the certificate unless there's any issue with certificate validation. 5. It means the “Source Availability Service” is trying to locate the “target Availability service”, but failed. I am suspecting it is still caused by the Autodiscover URL. For the cross-forest availability scenario, there are basically two options to configure Autodiscover: SCP method for trusted and DNS for untrusted. Note that, in a cross-forest topology, Exchange 2007 CAS can't use DNS Service Location (SRV) records to locate the Autodiscover service in the target forest. In this case, you need to create a host record for autodiscover URL and point it to the CAS server in the target forest. Note: Autodiscover returns the Availability InternalUrl to the Exchange 2007 CAS. Therefore, each internal URL in the Target forest should be accessible from the Exchange 2007 CAS in the source forest. Hope it is helpful. Regards, Fiona LiaoPlease remember to click Mark as Answer on the post that helps you, and to click Unmark as Answer if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.

If you are looking for any 3rd part products Quest have a great one called collaboration services http://www.quest.com/collaboration-services/ And a script based solution http://www.wapshere.com/missmiis/a-galsync-powershell-script Jonas Andersson | Microsoft Community Contributor Award 2011 | MCITP: EMA 2007/2010 | Blog: http://www.testlabs.se/blog | Follow me on twitter: jonand82

Hi I am getting 2 opposite responses in regard to usage of that command and I cannot lab it. Well; I was able to lab it with self signed certificates and trusts between 2 different domains in a virtual environment. However that is totally different from real world environment in which trust doesn't exist between domains and mail suffix is different from domain fqdn. The galsync portition I got to work previously (Sort of; using Microsoft FIM 2010). That can be a hell all to itself especially when dealing with IT admins in different domains.

Hi, If you are not sure between two opposite responses, then go to the official article for cmdlet Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace: ForestName Required System.String The ForestName parameter specifies the SMTP domain name of the target forest for users whose free/busy data must be retrieved. If your users are distributed among multiple SMTP domains in the target forest, run the Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace cmdlet once for each SMTP domain. Or, just simply have a try. I hope my suggestion is clear enough. Again, I suggest the article http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2011/03/04/3412075.aspx, which has detail steps and clear explanation. Regarding the virtual environment, things might be much more complicated based on my experience. All we can do is making sure each step is correct. Your understanding would be appreciated. Best regards, Fiona Liao Please remember to click “Mark as Answer” on the post that helps you, and to click “Unmark as Answer” if a marked post does not actually answer your question. This can be beneficial to other community members reading the thread.