Using Hosted Exchange with Small Business Server 2008

If you use a Hosted Exchange Service and you have Small Business Server 2008 you may find problems with autodiscover and automatically setting up Outlook to discover your Hosted Provider

The problem with Autodiscover

When you move to a Hosted Exchange Provider you will often have autodiscover configured so that you can automatically allow Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 to configure themselves for your email. If you have an SBS 2008 network you will find this does not work when you in the office because your SBS 2008 Server is configured to use autodiscover to itself and not to use the configuration from your Hosted Provider. So you have to change this, open the tool for Active Directory Sites and Services and then from the View Menu choose Show Services Node.
Next browse to the location shown, Services\Microsoft Exchange\First Organization\Exchange Administratove Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)\Servers\YOURSERVER\Procotols\YOURSERVER
Right click on the server name and choose properties.

Update attribute

Select the Attribute tab and then find the serviceBindingInformation attribute, this shows the Autodiscover URL. You can now update this to reflect the Autodiscover URL for your hosted provider. Now when an internal Outlook performs autodiscovery it will lookup the correct service.