m.exchangemail.com

June 3, 2009 4:35 PM

Seeking a lightweight web interface to Exchange 2003 server. Need something more usable than OMA, but more smartphone-friendly than Outlook Web Access.

We don't allow work email to be cached on non-work devices for legal reasons. I'd like to be able to log in to webmail but find OWA rather clunky on a smartphone browser; OMA provides a bare-bones interface that's intended for ActiveSync rather than actual humans. Has anyone cobbled together a reasonable solution? I guess I'm looking for something like the mobile gmail page for Outlook. We won't be upgrading to Exchange 2007 for a while so its features are not an option.

posted by benzenedream to computers & internet (7 comments total)

What kind of mobile device?
posted by Burhanistan at 5:50 PM on June 3

Anything that views the mail is going to cache some of it, somewhere. Do you mean that OWA is enabled but IMAP and ActiveSync are disabled, or that nothing is enabled but you want a substitute OWA?

Do you administer the server? If so, you could enable IMAP, set the firewall rules so that it is only allowed internally, then set up SquirrelMail or RoundCube on another server pointing via IMAP to the Exchange system.
posted by odinsdream at 7:12 PM on June 3

Burhanistan: iphone, blackberry, pre, windows mobile - basically any smartphone that has a reasonable browser.

Odinsdream: caching is fine during the browser session. OWA and Activesync are enabled, IMAP is disabled. Yes to administration - yes we want a substitute OWA that looks cleaner on small screens. I was hoping someone had hacked the OWA code to simplify the page. Most users would be checking Inbox and Calendars - I assume the regular IMAP webmail apps won't display calendars.
posted by benzenedream at 11:55 PM on June 3

That is corrrect - it would just be mail. I'm not aware of any projects to reverse-engineer the real OWA, but if you find something I'd be interested.
posted by odinsdream at 7:20 AM on June 4

"I assume the regular IMAP webmail apps won't display calendars"

IMAP does not support calendaring.
posted by SirStan at 9:59 AM on June 4

The "best" solution I have is what we do -- If employees want to use their own Blackberry -- we push down our BES policy to secure the device, force passwords, force locking, and have the ability to remotely wipe them.
posted by SirStan at 10:00 AM on June 4

Sirstan - yep, that's our current policy as well - if you want realtime email and calendaring we get to remotely wipe the device and enforce password policies. Webmail is the only access allowed on non-company property. The web smartphone access would be for users who just want to check their Inbox and calendar once in a while and are fine with logging in each time.

I was thinking that someone might have written a web frontend using ActiveSync or MAPI/RPC to talk to Exchange and thus get access to all the non-IMAP Exchange functionality, but I don't think it exists. OWA allows for customization on the logon/logoff pages but not in the content pages, with the exception of the lamebrain "Themes".
posted by benzenedream at 12:11 PM on June 4