Exchange connectivity analyser

Track down mystery problems with remote connections to Exchange with this free utility.

One of the more frustrating aspects of administering Exchange Server is when users complain of mystery times when they they were unable to connect to the server, but didn't get a sensible error message. If your remote users have ever told you that they get the message that "The connection to Microsoft Exchange is unavailable", you'll know what I mean.

The Exchange team has been working on a Web-based troubleshooter that is designed to be more helpful. The snappily named Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Connectivity Analyzer ( ExRCA) is a Web-based troubleshooting and diagnostic tool that can be used to work out what's gone wrong when people are unable to connect to Exchange over the Internet.

In addition to telling you what's gone wrong, ExRCA will highlight any configuration settings that are known to cause problems, and suggest how to put things right. The software used to test the connection is hosted in the Microsoft data centre, so you can feel safe using the software. 

ExRCA is currently in beta, and at the moment can be used to test problems with the following combinations:

Outlook Anywhere and Autodiscover for Exchange 2007 when used with Outlook 2007
RPC over HTTP for Exchange 2003 when used with Outlook 2003
Exchange ActiveSync and Autodiscover for Exchange 2007 when used with Windows Mobile 6.1
Inbound SMTP mail-flow

More combinations will be added in future updates. What happens when you use the software is that if the problem is identified, you're offered a link to TechNet pages that have details of the error and how to fix it.

You can find the beta of the utility at Exchange Connectivity Test.