Outlook autodiscovery issue after Exchange service pack 1 upgrade error 0x800C8203

Today let us discuss an issue that may occur once you upgrade your exchange 2013 to SP1.

Symptoms

• Partial or full outlook connectivity issue to internal and external users.
• Address book downloading issue.

Diagnosis

Once you face these similar issue we can start diagnosing from the client side.

There is a nice feature in outlook to check the connection status and test email auto configuration.Let us try this.

• Press Ctrl key and right click outlook icon in task bar,this will give you some additional options such as Connection status and Test Email auto configuration.Please have a look at both of these options and try to configure the mail id using auto configuration window.

If you see an error similar to this while running auto -configuration

Attempting Url https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml found through SCP

Autodiscover to https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml starting
Autodiscover to https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml FAILED (0x800C8203) Autodiscover to https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml starting
Autodiscover to https://myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml FAILED (0x800C8203)
Autodiscover to https://autodiscover.myserver.com/autodiscover/autodiscover.xml/ starting

Please try to disable any antivirus/firewall in your system and retry.

Outlook 2013 normally uses RPC over http for connecting to the exchange but after SP1 up gradation Exchange will use MAPI over RPC and this might be block by the firewall /Antivirus.

Solution

MAPI over RPC is a great feature in Exchange 2013 SP1.It gives us a lot of advantages such as fast reconnection,more security,more speedy syncing etc.

As a solution we can do any of the following:

1. In the antivirus we can create an exception to pass these traffic.

2.Registry edit to forcefully use RPC over HTTP

• Locate and select the following key in the registry.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Exchange
•  Point to New,      
• Select DWORD Value.
• Type MapiHttpDisabled as the name of the DWORD Value, and then press Enter.
• Right-click MapiHttpDisabled, and then click Modify.
• In the Value data box, type 1, and then click OK.

3.Change to RPC over HTTP in Server side.

    In the Exchange management Shell issue the following command:

           Set-OrganizationConfig -MapiHttpEnabled $True

     If you want to change back to RPC over HTTP use :

           Set-OrganizationConfig -MapiHttpEnabled $False

Hopping that this article will help to save some hours troubleshooting.Thanks for reading.

Chat server with audio/video chat and screen control

Openfire Video/Audio chat with remote screen control.

Hi all in my previous posts I have mentioned the step by step procedure on installing openfire in Centos minimal and integrating openfire with Active directory.

Today let me describe steps to create a fully functional chat server with Audio/Video chat facility and remote screen sharing and control.

The plugin that we are using for this is Redfire and the client is Spark.

Step 1

• Download the redfire plugin from here
• Once the download is completed use WinSCP or any other sftp client to upload the plugin to the openfire plugin directory.

            The openfire plugin location :  /opt/openfire/plugins

•   Restart openfire service once the upload is completed.

              service openfire restart

Step 2

If everything is successful you will get the below screen in the url : serveripaddres:7070/redfire

So everything is done the remaining part is to install the redfire plugin needed for Spark chat client.

You can download the plugin from the bottom of  redfire page.

And of course you can do many things such as conference,screen sharing and chat from this window.

Step 3

Let us install the redfire plugin in spark.

• Browse to the spark installation directory.
• Copy the downloaded plugin.
• Restart Spark.

 If the plugin installation is successful you can see a couple of new icons in the chat window of spark.

• The first button is used for Audio/Video chat
• The second one for Screen sharing and control.

 Note : Please install latest flash player for internet explorer.

Thanks for reading and start your research.