Cisco Unity Connection Single Inbox with Exchange 2003 Forms Based Authentication

Since the introduction of Unity Connection’s single inbox features, we have seen a more than a few customers switch from Unity to Unity Connection due to undisclosed reasons

Things do work great and I have seen customers appreciate the move to Unity Connection but there is a little gotcha if the customer is using Exchange 2003.

Cisco has it documented but most of us tend to overlook this seemingly minor point but one that can have major impact.

According to the Cisco document:

To synchronize Connection and Exchange 2003 mailboxes, you must install Connection 8.5(1) Service Update 1 (SU 1) or later.

Connection single inbox feature with Exchange 2003 requires WebDav interface to work properly. If Form Based Authentication option is enabled, WebDav interface can break the access to Exchange sever, therefore, it is not recommended to use single Inbox.

With Exchange 2003, Connection’s Single Inbox feature requires WebDav interface to function properly. Due to a limitation documented by Microsoft, ‘Forms Based Authentication’ may disrupt WebDav and hence is not recommended to be used with Single Inbox feature.

Most customers that I run into use forms based authentication for the OWA to put disclaimers and other warning notifications. In every single interaction with Exchange 2003 and forms based authentication that I have had, we HAD to disable it otherwise Single Inbox DID NOT work.

I have made a habit of mentioning this during the planning phase so the customer has enough time to plan on disabling forms based authentication. Many customers will be migrating away from Exchange 2003 but it is always good to be safe