Troubleshooting Lync-Exchange OWA Integration

Received a lot of feedback on one of my previous blog posts, on how to configure Lync RC and Exchange to enable OWA as a Lync Endpoint:

Configuring Lync RC and Exchange 2010 Sp1 to Enable OWA as a Lync Endpoint

And it seems a lot of you are experiencing the same problem I had when configuring it, being, you log into OWA, you get presence for your own account, and the Contact List appears to be “expanding”:

 IVC-0255

IVC-0254

But after a while the following error message shows up: “Instant Messaging isn’t available right now. the Contact List will appear when the service becomes available”…

IVC-0256

Time to troubleshoot, and here are the steps to follow…

Step 1. Start the logging tool

Log into your Lync RC server, and launch the Lync Server Logging Tool

IVC-0257

And check that you want to log All Flags for the SIP Stack, and then click Start Logging.

IVC-0258

Step 2. Log into OWA again, and wait for the error message to appear, when the error is there, click Stop Logging

Step 3. Download the OCS R2 Resource Kit on your Lync Management server, where you have launched the Logging tool

For download, here’s the link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=9e79a236-c0df-4a72-aba6-9a9602a93ed0&displaylang=en

Step 4. Click Analyze Log Files

IVC-0241

Have a close look at the given error message! In my case it clearly pointed out that the Peer “cs14ex.lync.local” was not a configured server on this network interface, which was right since I hadn’t added cs14ex.lync.local as a CsTrustedApplication yet.

What you can check is:

  • Is the certificate used on Lync, and Exchange issued by a trusted CA for both Lync and Exchange
  • Does the certificate have the correct name, both for Lync and Exchange
  • Did you ran Enable-CSTopology after adding Exchange as a csTrustedApplication
  • Is your replication working as it should on Lync, check by using the cmdlet Get-CsManagementStoreReplicationStatus

IVC-0259

Good Luck!

Ilse

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    We were able to get around the public wildcard issue by using an internally issued enterprise cert and using this cert for connecting to lync instead of the public cert linked to IIS.

  • Anonymous
    October 12, 2010
    Thanks iLse, I follow your troubleshooting guide and solve integration problem as you describe in this article. My problem is that  Exchange server certificate subject name is wrong. I request new certificate which subject name is Exchange hostname, then integration is OK. Thanks again.

  • Anonymous
    November 09, 2010
    Nice article Ilse, thanks for the pointers to the documentation too :) Peter

  • Anonymous
    November 22, 2010
    Ok - so following your guide I have it working internally but when I connect via the Internet, I get presence greyed out and no contact list. Appears to be failing to connect to something but I cannot determine what. Any suggestions?

  • Anonymous
    November 29, 2010
    Any option to fix wildcard certificates?` under data i get fqdn as (*.domain.com)

  • Anonymous
    January 18, 2011
    Ilsa, your blogs on configuring this setup are good starting points, and I thank you for them.  however, I'm trying to configure our lab with OWA/Lync integration using the self-signed certs that are configured when the products are installed.  Can you give us some guidelines on how this might be completed?  Thanks.

  • Anonymous
    January 24, 2011
    Thanks for your excellent post! One question: Is it possible to archive the IM conversation history also within outlook even if I'm chatting with OWA? Is there a powershell cmd to configure this right?

  • Anonymous
    February 15, 2011
    Hi Ilsa, Any news for wildcard users? Not beeing able to use wildcard certificates is really bothersome.

  • Anonymous
    July 13, 2011
    Hi, i face the same error. i troubleshoot all steps. but certficate side i use the CAS owa external name: mail.contoso.com. and my local exchange fqdn is xchange.contoso.com. please help what can i do. i don,t want to purchase new certificate. because external or internal users use the owa address: mail.contoso.com

  • Anonymous
    July 13, 2012
    Thanks for the post Ilse!  Are there any other troubleshooting guides for the integration of these apps?  We have an issue where some users can see the chat features and some don't (e.g. me).

  • Anonymous
    September 26, 2012
    SAN Names don't work in the cert for this- when i created a certificate with just the subject name to match the OWA directory/trusted app pool name-- and removed the individual CAS servernames it worked!

  • Anonymous
    December 03, 2015
    The comment has been removed