Hello, I am trying to push to have Outlook Anywhere turned on in our environment. I've tested it in my home lab and have gotten quite familiar with it, however I don't feel that I will be able to fully replicate my work environment in a test lab and therefore any testing I was to perform in the lab would not be an accurate representation of what may happen in our production environment. I know that enabling Outlook Anywhere is a very simple process, however I want to be clear on what might happen if it is not configured correctly. My understanding is that no clients would be affected because internal clients would continue to connect over TCP/IP. Can anyone confirm that this is the case? Are there any other possible ramifications of turning this on that could result in existing users having their E-mail disrupted?

The following article should be helpful.Use Outlook Anywhere to connect to your Exchange server without VPNSince this forum is for Windows 7 technical questions, for this kind of questions I suggest you discuss in the following forum.Installing, Upgrading, and Activating Microsoft Office Products Arthur Xie - MSFT

dbutch1976,That's a great question - more than the reason for using Outlook Anywhere (ability to serve more clients) - is the need to understand the implications of doing so. I can give you some ideas from my own experience.The two most important things that Outlook Anywhere will depend on will have different effects on your internal systems. The first is certificate services and the second is DNS services.The first: Certificate ServicesOutlook anywhere requires a certain level of encryption and a "Unified Communications Certificate" (I use Digicert) to make the process of connecting the clients to the server. When you purchase that certificate and apply it - it will take effect in every part of your Exchange operation - from OWA, to Local Clients to outlook Anywhere Clients. If that certificate is incorrect or points to the wrong location, this may take your internal clients down or cause errors.This leads to the second, DNS. You will want to name your server with a name (such as exchange) and have that name resolvable internally and externally. In addition having the autodiscover name available too is also important. When using Outlook Anywhere, these DNS names need to resolvable internally and externally. If the DNS configuration is incorrect internally it may cause interruptions or problems for your internal clients. If the clients are running ok now - it's unlikely - but changes may cause problems.If configured correctly - you can actually put all your internal clients on Outlook Anywhere (possibly useful to avoid reconfig if the users are in the office and on the road alot).I hope this gives you a bit of insight into this feature and possible effects,Kevin Costain @calwell on Twitter Calwell's BlogGoogle Profile (Buzz)

Thanks Kevin, that's exactly the kind of information I'm looking for. Based on your response my primary concern is the certificate we're currently using. We are presently using a 3rd party certificate from Digicert. When I open up the certificate and look under subject I see *.domainname.com. My question is this: How do I tell what kind of certificate I'm presently using?