ActiveSync requiring administrative rights to synchronize data with Windows Communication apps

Question

We are currently testing W8.1 Update 1 in our corporate environment and have run into an issue when attempting to synchronize the corporate exchange accounts with the Windows Communication apps (Mail, Calendar, People). The first problem we encountered was
the requirement for each user to log into a Microsoft account just to access the Communication apps, this was handled through GPO by enabling the "Allow Microsoft accounts to be optional" policy. We could then launch the application, were prompted
for exchange server information, but then upon attempting to synchronize received an error message stating that "To sync this account, you first need to make your Windows user account an administrator." Obviously we have no desire to make all of
our users administrators, but for the purpose of testing we added the user account to the administrators group. The same error message appears! A quick search revealed that changing the UAC to a lower setting would resolve the problem, and sure enough we then
received a prompt to Enforce Policies and synchronization completed.
This can't possibly be the intention, that every Windows 8 user using ActiveSync is required to be an administrator and has to lower the UAC. We did determine that once synchronization has been configured, the administrative rights can be removed and UAC
can be increased once again, but this is a ridiculous option.
I would really appreciate an explaination of the reasoning if this is infact the intended setup, and if it is not, then what we are doing wrong. Thank you.

Answer 1

Hi,
In following article, you will see that the admin permission is required to do so:
Activesync Working But Only For Some Users On Exchange 2007 / 2010
http://alanhardisty.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/activesync-not-working-on-exchange-2010-when-inherit-permissions-not-set/
Also, Microsoft's recommendation and best practice is that if you are a domain administrator that you have 2 accounts. One for your everyday user which is restricted in the same way that every other user is and a second for your administration role.
Kate Li
TechNet Community Support