How do I access OWA internally with an easy to remember name instead of https:\\mail.DN.com\exchange?

You can register a cname of webmail that points to the DN of mail.dn.com.  This gets the DNS portion taken care of.  In the default web site that hosts owa you will need to drop a file called default.htm in the c:\inetpub\wwwroot folder.  In this file you can put

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh"
      CONTENT="5; URL=https://mail.dn.com/exchange">

This will allow users to type webmail in their browser and they will automatically get redirected to the exchange site.

This should also allow external users to type http://mail.dn.com and be redirected to https://mail.dn.com/exchange without having to type the whole thing.  

Before I start entering information into DNS, there's already a cname pointing to server1.domain.local for companyweb. If I enter another cname of webmail pointing to server1.domain.local will that interfere with companyweb? We use companyweb from the IE address bar to open our internal website.

In c:\inetpub\wwwroot folder there's already a file named default.htm that looks like it's used for RWW
Should I add your html commands into this existing default.htm file if the DNS CNAME entry is Ok?

Thanks Matthew

Hang on.  So your Exchange server is already hosting an internal company web site?  Just adding the DNS entries will not affect the ability to use companyweb or anything else.  But adding the default.htm could.  Please let me know how your internal website works...

So you if you type https://server1.domain.local/exchange you get OWA
if you type http://server1.domain.local you get your company web site?

Yes, Exchange, company internal, and remote web workplace are all hosted on same machine. I added the webmail dns cname and no problems with companyweb as you said.

We type https:\\mail.registereddomainname.com\exchange for OWA, Internally or externally
We type https:\\mail.registereddomainname.com\remote for RWW, internally or externally
Internally we type companyweb to get our internal sharepoint site ie:companyweb in SBS2003

our ISP has mail.registereddomainname.com as the DNS A record

I added the site in IIS, listening on port 80, I could only enter one host header webmail (i couldn't figure out how to add the second with a separator) I used your html in the default.htm in the new inetpub sub folder and tested.

typing webmail in IE now takes me to OWA for our company, Thank you very much!
 
Having this new site listen on port 80, does it open our server up for any security issues to the internet?

No, it uses host headers to determine which site to display, so this will only be displayed internally.

Yeow... you don't need to do any of that...  this is an SBS installation which is preconfigured.

Just have users use http://sbsservername/exchange if you want them to access OWA internally.

The other option is to access it from the link that's automatically configured on your companyweb home page at http://companyweb

Jeff
TechSoEasy

His requirement was to be able to type webmail not click on a link or type http://sbsservername/exchange.

Well, I would wonder why they need to access OWA internally in the first place since SBS provides Outlook 2003 licenses.

Jeff
TechSoEasy

Jeff,

We have groups of sales people that share a common login account on many different workstations. So the outlook 2003 would only be for that login account. They do have a link in companyweb, and they do type in http://sbsservername/exchange. We have some very novice users, some first time, so it is much easier to tell them type webmail or click the bookmark then http:servername/exchange. They remember companyweb for the intranet so I figure they'll remember webmail for email. We will gradually ween them to their own log-in's as time goes on, maybe, for now it's just a few web app names, webmail, and companyweb.

Thanks Matthew, just what we needed