Problems with sync of Dates in Exchange/Evolution/Nokia Mail for Exchange

I just took over a new position at my university and try to setup a working environment for Mail
/Calendar and ToDos for my personal desktop pc, the pc of my secretary and the mobile phone.

The scenario is as follows:

The university has decided to use an Exchange-Server (as far as I know Exchange 2003) to manage Mails and Calendars etc.. No way to change this.

The secretary uses Outlook on her computer.
I am using a linux computer and additionally a laptop (both with latest Ubuntu 8.10) and Evolution (2.24.2).
The mobile is a Nokia E71 with latest Nokia Mail for exchange (2.7) installed. As far as I understand Nokia has licensed ActiveSync to access Exchange Servers.

No chance to change anything of the basic decisions, the secretary knows only windows, I am not willing to go back to Windows and the Nokia Mobile is a must.

The Exchange account is "owned" by me, the secretary has the highest level to access mails and calendars for that account.

So far most of the things work pretty fine.
Access to mails work without any problems from all devices.

There is one problem left regarding the calendar:

When I create a new event within Evolution this event shows up correctly in the Exchange account. Means the secretary sees the event, can edit and change it etc. BUT this event is not synced from the exchange account to the Nokia mobile.
I do not have any clue what the reason might be for that. Evolution uses the same WebDAV-Interface to Exchange like I do, when using the web-interface. Events created with that web-interface do sync! So it is not the fact, using WebDAV.
So in the end I think, that there might be any "flag" or internal data structure set by Evolution OR something interpreted by Nokia Mail for exchange that causes this behaviour.

In the moment have to use Outlook via a terminal-server but that is not a final solution, because the terminal server is only available on the intranet and sometimes I have to use the laptop for dates and meetings outside of our intranet. And in general I hate the situation not to know reasons for problems.

Meanwhile I got a response from Nokia-Support. It goes like this:

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To me, it sounds like Evoloution is not creating the calender item correctly in Exchange.

Why do I think that it is Evoloution? Direct Push, or Exchange Active Sync (EAS) as it is now called, works in the following manner:

1.)Your handheld keeps an open HTTPS session open to the Exchange 2003 Front End server
2.) When a new item is created in your mailbox, that item is then pushed to your handheld.

The gory details of how Exchange knows to push that particular item to your phone lie within the ESE database. And from the details you have provided, it sounds like that Evoloution is indeed creating the calendar appointment, it is just not informing the process that is running exchange (store.exe), which in turn would push the item to your handheld.

I know that is not the answer you want to hear, but without examining the actual calender item that Evoloution creates, it is impossible to tell.

What I can tell you for certain though, is this is most likely an Evoloution-Exchange issue, and you should contact either support for Evoloution (if such a thing exists) or Microsoft support to confirm that the appointments are not being created correctly by Evoloution.

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Because there is a thread on the Novell Forums Website http://forums.novell.com/novell-product-support-forums/evolution/327069-evolution-calendar-appointments-wm6.html regarding this topic I really think it is a Evolution-Problem.

Detlev


Distribution: Ubuntu 8.10 (intrepid)
Gnome Release: 2.24.1 2008-10-24 (Ubuntu)
BugBuddy Version: 2.24.1