Out Of office not working

This article will help to fix the below error for MS Exchange servers
 I. Out Of office not working
 II. Warning when opening outlook  "server.domain.com"
 III. Warning when opening outlook "autodiscover.domain.com"
 IV. Make Internal URLs and External URLs the same.

Most Exchange administrators don't check the complete URLs which Exchange uses for serving MAPI clients or miss URLs to set and add certificate names after installing Exchange server. Below are fixes for those errors.

1. First make sure you have a Forward lookup zone named "externaldomain.com"  in your internal DNS server.

2. Then create the below A record in the newly created zone which points to exchange CAS/HUB server IP or load balancer IP if you have one.

     a) autodiscover.domain.com

     b) mail.domain.com (common name)

3. Then make sure you have all the required names added as SANs in your SSL Certificate. The below names should be present for a single domain exchange.

     a) mail.domain.com (common name)

     b) autodiscover.domain.com

4. Make sure IIS is enabled on the installed certificate.

Type "Get-ExchangeCertificate" in Exchange Management Shell and see IIS enabled or no.

Exchange 2007

Before services enabled in Exchange 2007

After services enabled in Exchange 2007

Use the command shown below to enable the services. You can change the services according to your requirement. but IIS is mandatory.

Enable-ExchangeCertificate -Services IMAP, IIS, SMTP -thumbprint 896B74B25F7EBF330C93E56DA2A76CFC6A7

5. Enter the below command in Exchange Management Shell and see the Autodicover URLs are  set.                                                                                                                            

Get-clientAccessServer | fl Name,AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri

If you see the default URLs set by exchange installation use the below command to set it to the same as external.                                      

Set-ClientAccessServer -Identity server1 -AutoDiscoverServiceInternalUri "https://mail.domain.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml"

6. Enter the below command in Exchange Management Shell and see the offline address book URLs are set.                                                                                                               

Get-OabVirtualDirectory |  fl Server,Name,internalurl,externalurl

If you see the default URLs set by exchange installation use the below command to set it to the same as external.                                       

Set-OabVirtualDirectory -Identity "server1\oab (default web site)" -InternalUrl https://mail.domain.com/oab -ExternalUrl https://mail.domain.com/oab

7. Enter the below command in Exchange Management Shell and see the exchange web services URLs are set.                                                                                 

Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory | fl name,internalurl,externalurl

If you see the default URLs set by exchange installation use the below command to set it to the same as external.                                        

set-WebservicesVirtualDirectory -Identity "server1\EWS (default web site)" -InternalUrl https://mail.domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx  -ExternalUrl https://mail.domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx

8.Check to see that the Out of Office URL is correct from a workstation/outlook.

Press Ctrl and right-click on the Outlook icon located in your system tray, you can select Test E-mail AutoConfiguration.

Enter the email address of the mailbox you have opened and the password. Since we are not using POP3 or IMAP, there is no reason to leave the GuessSmart checkboxes checked.

After clicking Test, you will get the URL used to configure OOF.

Please reset IIS using the command below (Optional but recommended).

iisreset /noforce

Now you should have all your errors cleared.

To clear certificate error and set URLs in Exchange2010. Please check follow this.

To clear certificate error and set URLs in Exchange2013. Please check follow this.

To clear certificate error and set URLs in Exchange2016. Please check follow this.