"A stupid little detail in an Apple app nicely illustrates the extreme attention to the fine points of user experience that makes people fanatical about the company." Wired News.
Here's my version: "A stupid little detail in an Apple app* nicely illustrates the extremely poor documentation and implementation that makes people frustrated with Apple software."
* Microsoft Entourage is the app in question. Getting the application to open other users shared calendars is the part that has extremely poor documentation. (You need the latest version of Entourage with SP2 for it to even think about working - and the exchange servers need at least SP2). The method of the madness is that it doesn't work simply by looking up the person in the address book, no, you have to go into the advanced properties and use the full alias of the username @ the root/parent domain of the organisation in order for it to work properly. For example instead of using jo.blog@centralblog.com you have to use blogj1@blogger.com where blogj1 is the actual username** on the (exchange) system, and blogger is the parent domain. Thankfully this is documented on the Internet, here, although it is noticeably missing from any Apple or Microsoft pages. And does anybody ever answer mac support questions on the internet to a point where a solution is provided? No, never in my experience.
** The stupidness of the exchange / active directory (AD) implementation of usernames is that you can have blogj on the system twice in AD, once in the blogger/centralblog domain and again (as another person) in blogger/otherdomain - yet exchange doesn't like this one bit at all, and will give the second blogj a DIFFERENT alias/username, such as blogj1 !!!
8 comments:
Why are you frustrated with Apple software when you're using microsoft Entourage?
First of all, Entourage is Microsoft software for Macs. So you shouldn't be complaining about Apple but instead about Microsoft.
Second, if you can't open a shared calendar using the addressbook then you have installation and configuration problem with with Entourag itself or with the Exchange server and its LDAP implementation. When properly configured they do work, but you might be looking in the wrong place...Entoruage, when you might want to look at your Exchange server.
Once again another Mac question unanswered. You have defended MAC but still have not answered the question. We have had the same issue with Entourage. Guess we both have configuration issues with our Exchange server. Instead of saying it's Exchange how about giving us a true answer. Like where we may look in Exchange for this problem.
Thanks
Thanks! This was super helpful to me.
Try hitting:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/924608
Find the person using the address book, then hilite them, click Advanced, then in that window type in the full URL to their OWA root (ie, https://mail.whatever.com/exchange/email.address@sitename.com/)
You're good to go.
Has to do with email alias not matching the login name... something that should be very easy for the client to cope with.
anonymous you are a true life saver/God/genius and I am going to forever be in your debt.
2 Years on from this string the problem is still as difficult as ever to find a soution for until I stumbled across your post above and in the advanced section I put
https://mail.whatever.com/exchange/email.address@sitename.com/
Bang no error messages, shared calendar came up and it is working a treat in Entourage 2008
Thank you again
Where do I type the https://mail.whatever.com/exchange/email.address@sitename.com? When I highlight the user's name and click Advanced, there are three fields: name, E-mail Address, and Server address.
If I fill in one field, do I leave the other two blank?
I'm using Entourage 2004.
Many thanks - Evan.
Thank you for clarifying this!
You saved me hours of frustration.
Thank you again,
Chris
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