We recently upgraded to Exchange 2003 from 2000 and had some inital problems with public folders in ESM (Exchange System Manager). When we go to ESM to look at public folders we can see the folder on the E2000 box but not on the E2003. We have been working with Microsoft of this for about two weeks now. Finally we found what it was that was causing it. The way we did the redirect on E2000 was to point the IIS Default website to another Default Website that was the SSL redirect. This was find for E2000 but for E2003 it causes the ESM to not function right because of that. If we disable the SSL redirect website that we have we can access the Public folders in ESM but it doesn't if we have the default page enabled. So, Microsoft gave us this link below and say that it was suppose to be done this way. So we tried it and it didn't work. These are instructions for E2007 but said it would work for E2003 also.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998359(EXCHG.80).aspx

We have two website address that the end users can use to get to the OWA: webmail.companyname.com and mail.companyname.com 

My question is: Has anyone ever ran across this before and what is the easist way to do the SSL redirect without having to retrain our end users of 1800 strong?

The main reason for the issue is that the SSL certificate name does not match your server name. In other words your SSL certificate is likely for mail.companyname.com while your server name is servername.companyname.com.

 Two questions: Are you applying the SSL security settings Default website or to Exchange? Do you have a Front-End/Back-End setup or just a single server?

For URL redirection, we've done it the following way:

• Open notepad.exe and type the word "redirect" w/o the quote.
• Save the file in your C:\Inetpub\wwwroot directory as redirect.htm.
• Right-click on the Default Web Site and go to properties.
• Go to Documents tab and add redirect.htm and make sure it appears on the top of the list.
• Next you'll need to create a simple .asp script to do the URL redirection. Check out http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555053 and http://suport.microsoft.com/kb/839357 articles and apply whatever fits your needs. If you're using Forms-based authentication, then go for the first link.

As for where you apply SSL... once you setup redirection as per above, there is no need to turn on SSL on Default Web Site, and you can just turn it on the Exchange site.

 This might be enough to stop the issue you're having.

 If that doesn't help, other than setting up Front-end/Back-end topology, I don't know what else will help. I was in your shoes before and everytime I needed to change something on the public folders, I'd have to go in, turn off SSL, make the changes and then turn it back on. A pain in the rear for sure and definitely one that compromises security.

Good luck.

1.  We are appling this to the Default Website. So that anytime they go to webmail.companyname.com or mail.companyname.com they will be redirected to the https address.

2.  We are not using Front-End/Back-End setup.

I have recently found out that I can not do anything with the moblie devices because of this redirect. It always redirects me to the https website, no matter what I use. So I will have to change this. I will have to try the two articles that you gave me and see what happens. Thanks for the information.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555053

This article says "Assuming that the only thing IIS does on your Exchange server is OWA, make the following change to redirect requests to the /exchange virtual directory." I will have IIS doing more than just OWA, it will be doing OMA and ActiveSync as well. Thanks.