Outlook Web Access New Mail Notification

Please feel free to ask me any questions directly, I'd be glad to help you out.  envador@envador.com

Q1: Why am I getting the error: "The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust with remote server." ?

Q2: Can you help me figure out my settings?

Q3: How do I know when to check the "Server uses Forms Based Authentication" checkbox?

Q4: How do I use OWANotify to monitor multiple Outlook Web Access accounts?

Q5: What command-line options are there?

Q1: Why am I getting the error: "The underlying connection was closed: Could not establish trust with remote server." ?
 

A:  This error occurs when the security certificate on your SSL-enabled OWA site has some oddity.  You might notice that whenever you manually connect to OWA via IE you get a "Security Warning" popup page with some comment about the validity of your server's SSL certificate.  OWANotify gets stuck here because it's not able to get past that warning.  I DO have a beta version OWANotify12071216.zip available that will bypass the warnings that you would normally have answered "yes" to.

Q2: Can you help me figure out my settings?

A: Here are some tips for you to figure out your settings:

URI:
For example's sake, let's say your email address is john.doe@myserver.com
You probably already know most of your URI if you're accustomed to checking your mail using Outlook Web Access.  Typically, you might open IE and enter your server's OWA address in the address bar.  For example, if your server's host is mail.myserver.com, you might enter http://mail.myserver.com/exchange as the URI into IE.  Then, depending on your server's configuration, you're either prompted to enter your username/password in a pop-up box (Integrated Authentication), or you're presented with a web form (Forms Based Authentication).  Once logged in, you can inspect your IE's address bar for more clues to determining your URI.  Your IE address bar might now show something like http://mail.myserver.com/exchange/firstname.lastname as the URI.  You're getting close!!  Once you know this, all you have to do is add /inbox to the end of if it, making your final URI for OWANotify as http://mail.myserver.com/exchange/firstname.lastname/inbox

(Additional URI tips: continuing with the example above, if your email address is john.doe@myserver.com, your URI might be http://mail.myserver.com/exchange/john.doe/inbox .... Exchange's OWA URI is usually in the format of http://{your_server_address}/exchange/{your_user_name}/Inbox ... all you have to do is substitute {your_server_address} with your exchange server's .com address and substitute {your_user_name} with whatever is to the left of the @ symbol in your email address.)

Username:
Continuing with the john.doe@myserver.com example, your username would probably be john.doe

Password:
The password you would typically enter.  Currently, OWANotify does not support a few odd characters like < > / \ ... and also letters with foreign accents.  I'm working on an update to support this.  The problem lies in how OWANotify saves settings in an XML file.

Domain:
With all the testing I've done, domain doesn't really seem to make any difference.  Continuing with the john.doe@myserver.com example, you could try just using (without quotes) "myserver" (recommended) or "myserver.com" (without quotes).

Server Uses Forms Based Authentication Checkbox:
Please see the FAQ question below for "How do I know when to check the "Server uses Forms Based Authentication" checkbox?"

Q3: How do I know when to check the "Server uses Forms Based Authentication" checkbox?

A: Forms Based Authentication mode (FBA) uses a web form for login.  The other login method is integrated authentication and uses a windows-style login box. Check the checkbox if your server uses FBA.  See the screenshots below for examples of both:
 

Forms Based Authentication (FBA)	Integrated Authentication

Q4: How do I use OWANotify to monitor multiple Outlook Web Access accounts?

A: You can run multiple of instances of OWANotify with different configurations.  This will give you additional mail icons in your system tray -- one icon for each instance of OWANotify.  To have each instance of OWANotify run with its own configuration, you must create a new shortcut that specifies a custom configuration file.  Consider the following scenario:

You want to check Exchange OWA mail on two different email accounts: joe1@mailserver1.com and joe2@mailserver2.com

1.  Create a shortcut for joe1@mailserver1.com OWANotify mail settings:

1a. The quickest way to get to shortcut creation is to right-click on your desktop and select [New] - [Shortcut]
You can click on the [Browse] button of the "Create Shortcut" wizard to specify the location of your OWANotify.exe

 

1b. After browsing for the OWANotify.exe, you will need to customize this shortcut to run a custom configuration.  All you have to do is add -c somename.cfg after the shortcut.  For our example, we will use Joe1.cfg for our custom config filename.  See the screenshot for an example:

 

 

1c. Next, you will be asked to name your shortcut.  Use a specific name so you will know what configuration OWANotify will run as.  See the screenshot for our example:

 

1d. After clicking finish, your shortcut with a custom configuration will be created!

 

2.  Continuing with our example, you will now need to follow the same steps as 1a through 1d, except substituting "Joe2" where necessary.  This will create you a second shortcut, with its own Joe2 custom configuration:

3. Run each of the OWANotify shortcuts and click on the "Activity Log" tab.  Notice that both instances of OWANotify start up looking for the config file name specified in the shortcut's command line arguments.  The first Activity Log entries will show an ERROR reading your specified config file.  This is perfectly normal for the first run since your config file does not exist yet.  OWANotify will create the file automatically as seen in line 3 of the Activity Log:

4.  Go to the General tab of each instance of OWANotify and enter the settings for each Outlook Web Access account you'll be monitoring.  Pay close attention to the [Tag] field.  It is important that you assign a suitable name for your Tag, as this is what will be displayed in all popups and mouseover tooltips for each OWANotify instance -- without this, you wouldn't be able to tell one instance apart from another!


 

Q5: What command-line options are there?