Outlook 2007 & Exchange 2007 - Out of office assistant not working

Question

Hi,
when using outlook 2007 and the users mailbox is on an Exchange 2007 server the out of office assistant doesn't work. When you start the out of office assistant the following message is displayed:
'Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. Try again later.'
Using Outlook 2003 and connect to the same mailbox, the assistant works fine, however you don't have the additional features new to the Assistant.
Also, when using outlook 2007 and connect to an Exchange 2003 mailbox the out of office assistant is also functioning fine.
Using Outlook Web Access on Exchange 2007 to set the out of office assistant works also fine, so the error message is not correct.
Any idea how to fix this ?
Franc.

Answer 1

Whilst I agree that auto-discover and other comment's could be upheld, I know that even when EWS and auto-discover are setup correctly that this problem will still occur.
I manage an Exchange 2007 environment with 300 users and and Exchange 2010 environment with 700 user's all using Outlook 2007.  We are in the progress of deploying Outlook 2010 but I know with the new authentication process of the Outlook
client with Exchange 2007 or older and Outlook 2007 or older, this problem will still occur.
I know that their are just a few out of a 1,000 user base that experience this problem, so I don't see how global settings and configurations and settings are the culprit.
Just like the problem caused by a badly designed update in November or December of last year that meant auto-discover does not auto-configure a new Outlook profile because it would not detect the user's e-mail address but somehow create some random e-mail
address with the AD account name before the @ and the FQDN for the domain name, which involved a further release of another update several month's later to fix that.
Plus the other problem with the daily and frequent prompt's throughout the day for OWA domain login credential's despite being authenticated and Outlook contacting Exchange fine signified by the bottom-right hand corner status stating so.  I press escape
and Outlook carries performing as normal for it do the same a few hours later, however I find that after about half a dozen prompt's over several days, it will disconnect the Outlook client saying 'Need Password' in the bottom-right, which despite left and
right-mouse clicking does not load a login prompt to re-enter credentials that I should not need to be doing in the first place considering that I am logged in with the correct domain account on my computer and using the destined mailbox for that AD account.
Exiting Outlook gracefully and re-launching Outlook a few seconds later allowing time for the background application handles and sub-handles amongst probably other things from the previous Outlook session to close (although, I do find every so often this
process is hampered every so often by having to end the Outlook.exe process directly through Task Manager before being able to re-attempt launching the Outlook client) and Outlook will just reconnect without the need or receiving a prompt to enter the login
details but I will no doubt receive another login prompt that I can likely just press cancel to or the escape button or perhaps, have to follow the above process again.
Just like releasing SP1 for Exchange 2010 to add more problems that worked without it but fixing those problems that existing in 2010.
I find that deleting a database result's in a failure error that in fact does successfully remove the database but since SP1, I know have to run a shell command to remove the database in the registry to delete an entry from a 'state' and 'lockstate' folder
before I am rid of the Exchange configuration, to then have to suspend all database copies on that server and re-start all of the Exchange services before I can actually delete the edb file.  Just absurd.
It's all just a backwards and forwards exercise with Microsoft but would love permanent solutions to all of the above.  Please advise on the above because it is a major irritation.