Solution to inability to Delegate? error 65486

[Bill Bryson]

Is there a solution to the inability to delegate using Entourage 2004 SP2.
Some people in the past indicated that they had success but others like
myself get the "error :65486" no matter what we do. Also it does not matter
what I put in the Advanced field - nothing changes (even when I put
gibberish in this field).

If ANYONE can get delegate to work, could you post your configuration info.
Also include the version of your Exchange server. We are using Exchange
2003.

Bill Bryson

 

[Matthew Scholz]

Hello Everybody,

After much searching and grief (and a few hours with someone at M$ who
actually knew what they were talking about) I finally have a working
configuration that provides this functionality.

It turns out that Office for Mac 2004 SP2 is worlds apart from its
un-patched counterpart. To get to the meat of it, SP2 has a partial
implementation of RPC. As far as I can tell this is completely undocumented
but it explains the reason that you can right-click on a item in the folders
list on the left and delegate that way but not via Tools -> accounts -> edit
account -> delegate. The former method uses Webdav to delegate while the
latter uses RPC.

Since no admin I've talked to knew that RPC was implemented in SP2, none of
them had considered the requirements of RPC when configuring the client
machines. First of all this won't work for anyone who doesn't have a
connection that can route RPC. Second, the client machine must have the
exchange server's domain listed in the Search Domains field in System
Preferences -> Network Preferences (don't ask me why).

Assuming the network/DNS infrastructure is configured correctly for exchange
and you made the change above, you can create an exchange account with the
Account Setup Assistant and it will successfully determine your settings.
Try it first without SSL if you have problems but it should work fine either
way. Click Verify Settings and make sure everything works.

Now here's the crazy part: edit the account you just created and under
Account Settings change the domain name from the FQDN to just the name of
the domain i.e. (exchangedomain.host.com changes to exchangedomain). Quit
and reopen Entourage and everything should work fine.

I'm running Exchange Server 2003 on Windows Server 2003 with all service
packs and critical patches installed as of 2006.02.01. My client workstation
runs Mac OS 10.4.4 with Office 11.2.1. According the the guy at M$ they are
currently testing office SP3 which has major improvements and expansion of
RPC as well as some other really cool stuff for Entourage.

The SP2 upgrade really was huge - MS keep up the good work, I'd just ask
that you update your knowledge base once in a while ;-).



- Matthew Scholz

 

[Bill Bryson]

Matthew,

Thanks for this information. Initially it did not work for me but put me on
the right path. From what I have learned so far, three things must be set
up right for the "My Delegates" delegation process to work:

1 - In System Preferences, Network, TCP/IP pane: the Search Domain field
must have the Exchange IP domain in it. For example, "xyz.txstate.edu".

2 - It was necessary for us to also modify the Account settings to use the
actual domain that that is used by everyone here to authenticate against.
Previously we were using a fully qualified domain in the domain field of
Account settings for the Exchange account. Changing the domain from
"xyz.txstate.edu" to just "TXSTATE" in our case was needed.

3 - Finally, in our environment at least, it was still necessary to use the
"Advanced..." button in the "My Delegates" pane and specify the delegation
server. We typed in the partially qualified name of the backend server
housing the user's data ("abc" not "abc.xyz.txstate.edu") in the Advanced
field prior to clicking the Add... button to select the person and begin
the delegation process. IMPORTANT: You must NOT use a FQDN when specifying
the delegation server in Advanced...

I hope this helps others that might have similar problems with using My
Delegates in Tools/Accounts/Edit/Delegates tab.

Thanks again to Matthew. After months of struggle with no results seeing
this feature work for us finally is great news!

Bill Bryson