There are some limits to Exchange account scripting in Entourage 2004, and
those limits are different than they between Exchange accounts and IMAP
accounts in Entourage v.X.

In v.X, Exchange accounts acted like a subset of an IMAP account, although
of course they have all sorts of Exchange-specific properties. Some IMAP
account properties, though, didn't carry over -- it was confusing. Pay
attention to the dictionary, is my advice there. I tried to get fancy and
got tripped up by it.

In 2004, the Exchange accounts are more distinct, and are a lot less like
IMAP accounts. I'm not sure if the options that Paul mentions are actually
needed for Exchange accounts -- which don't even seem to follow the
"Schedule" model, where you'd "Send & Receive All" for normal accounts. Many
of the IMAP options have sort-of disappeared from Exchange accounts in v11.

As for setup, we've done it and it seems successful. I looked over Andrew's
script but didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

Andrew, do the settings work correctly when you enter them manually in the
client? Seems simple, but we had to go through several iterations of
settings before we got some that worked ... and I'd advise that you start
with the settings the updated auto discovery gives you, it's much better in
v11 than in v10. That, and we set up a new host just for our Global Catalog.
(Does "butler.edu" point to your GC, or to another type of LDAP server?)

Point is, we got our manual settings more or less correct (a LOT of trial
and error), and then automated it, sort-of like reverse-engineering what we
wanted.

As for our settings in comparison to yours: We don't set up our "Exchange
server" property with a URL; we just use the hostname of the Exchange front
end / OWA servers. I think your construction also works. We also don't
require DAV/SSL for regular public folder access -- YMMV. I also wonder if
you're replicating your Public Folder data to the front end server -- or
whether "outlook.butler.edu" is a back end server. (I'm also assuming you've
got a front end / back end environment for Exchange, rather than running
both on the same server. It sounds like it's more common to have the front
and back ends split.)


We also bring in a default set of preferences (by copying the relevant
files) and a default account (again by copying files into the User Data
folder). I believe we settled on deleting that initial default account and
creating a new one. This allowed us to get by Entourage's insistence on
popping up dialogs on first run, if there was no account defined yet.

I am now authorized to send out our application, Reignition, if anyone's
interested in perusing it. (No warranties expressed or implied, of course.)
More info here, and we'll possibly post the application there for download
in the future:

<http://www.rit.edu/its/services/desktop_support/mac/reignition.html>


It does more than just set up Entourage -- it does Mail and other things as
well -- but it should be a handy reference if you're scripting system setup.
We relied heavily on AppleScript and bash scripts and the "defaults"
mechanism in the OS.

Other tips/ideas:

*   You can get the local short name with one less argument (thanks to Rob
Jorgensen):

set username to do shell script "whoami"

*   We get the long name by pulling it out of the "my card" address book
card in Apple's Address Book. In most circumstances, especially when people
start with a local account created by the Mac OS X Setup Assistant, this is
filled in for you. (Alas, Jaguar's Address Book has no concept of the "my
card." And Entourage and Address Book differ in their terminology for this,
so it can get confusing sometimes.)


HTH.


On 8/13/04 1:14 PM, "Paul Berkowitz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> The scriptability of Exchange accounts is very limited in Entourage 2004 - all
> sorts of features missing. There's no equivalent for
> Synchronize all items to server" or the other synchronization settings. I
> guess you can't just ask the users to go into Advanced pane and do that
> themselves?
> 
> I'll forward this to someone who has been setting up Exchange accounts in
> Entourage for an entire university of Macs. Maybe he knows a way. I'll let you
> know.


--
Jeremy Reichman
Information & Technology Services
Rochester Institute of Technology


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