Let’s say you have a lot of users that need to use Outlook and connect to the company mail while they are outside your company’s network. With Outlook 2007, you can use Outlook Anywhere, but how do you configure this for all users? You can use the Office Customization Tool, but this will leave the users the possibility to modify the settings and it will also require a new Office setup or a modification of the existing Office setup. So would you prefer Group Policy?

 

OK, you look in the default ADM file for Outlook 2007 and you can’t find any option to configure the Outlook Anywhere settings? That’s probably because they are missing from the default ADM template.

 

But wait, don’t start thinking about customizing ADMs just yet, as there is one already customized that you can download.

Just take a look at the following article, it comes with a link to the page from where you can download the ADM as well.

 

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/961112 - You cannot use Group Policy settings to configure Outlook Anywhere (RPC/HTTP) settings

Here are the policies you can configure using this new administrative template:

 

Also take a look at the “Explain” tab for the RPC/HTTP Connection Flags policy, it will give you more info on what connection options you can configure. Basically you can configure “flags” which correspond to options on the “Microsoft Exchange Proxy Settings” window.

 

  

 

For example, choosing the option “Flags 1+2” will enable the “Connect to Microsoft Exchange using HTTP” checkbox on the Connection tab and will also check the box for “Connect using SSL only” (see screenshot above).  

 

For more information about Outlook Anywhere, please refer to the following articles:

 

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc179036.aspx - Configure Outlook Anywhere in Outlook 2007

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb123741(EXCHG.80).aspx - Overview of Outlook Anywhere

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa998934(EXCHG.80).aspx - Deploying Outlook Anywhere

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa997703(EXCHG.80).aspx - Recommendations for Outlook Anywhere