Busy Connector for Lotus Notes and Exchange - Part 2

In Part 1 we took at look at the architecture of the Quest Free/Busy (F/B) Connector in Coexistence Manager for Notes (CMN) as well as how Exchange interfaces with it. We also configured the F/B Connector web services and the Domino Free Busy Connector Service. In this post, we’ll configure the Exchange Free Busy Connector Service, the Domino QCALCON task, and the Exchange organization. As a reminder, here’s a copy of our sample environment that will be referenced:

Configuring the Exchange Free Busy Connector

Create a standard mailbox enabled user (e.g. svc_xch_cmn_fb) in Exchange. This will be used by CMN to query Exchange F/B information.
Launch PowerGUI on Q-EXFBC01.
Browse to PowerGUI\CMN Free/Busy Connector Management\Configure Domino Server and Exchange Components.
Launch the Configuration Wizard from the task pane.
- Preferred Exchange server: mail.contoso.com.

Note: This is generally the URL which end users would access your CAS servers with internally such as for OWA. While the PowerGUI UI suggests you should enter a specific CAS server, it is better to enter a load balanced URL or at least the friendly URL listed on your SSL certificate. In this example we will use mail.contoso.com but you should substitute the value most appropriate for your environment.

Domain\Username: CONTOSO\svc_xch_cmn_fb.
Password: (service account password).

Complete the wizard.
Start the Quest CMN Exchange Free/Busy Connector Service service.

Configuring the Exchange Organization

Configuring your Exchange organization is perhaps the easiest part of this project. You’ll simply need to configure an Availability Address Space for lotus.contoso.com. If you’re not familiar with this, take a moment to review this post.

Launch the Exchange Management Shell (EMS).
Run the following PowerShell command:

Add-AvailabilityAddressSpace -ForestName "lotus.contoso.com" -AccessMethod OrgWideFB -UseServiceAccount:$true

Configuring the QCALCON Task

The final server component you’ll need to configure is the QCALCON task. Tasks are background processes of sort in Domino at least to the extent I understand them. You can configure them to either run at startup or at a specific time. For this step, install PowerGUI and the CMN Domino Server Components on LN-ADM01. The task and its configuration files are installed directly in the Domino server folder (e.g. c:\lotus\domino).

Configuring the QCALCON task is quite straight-forward.

Launch PowerGUI.
Browse to PowerGUI\CMN Free/Busy Connector Management\Configure Domino Server and Exchange Components\Advanced\Domino Server Task (QCALCON)
If prompted to browse for the Config File, you’ll find it under your Domino installation folder (e.g. c:\lotus\domino\qcalcon.exe.config).
Select Set Foreign Domain Name in the task pane. Enter mail.box when prompted.
Select Set Exchange Free/Busy Connector host name in the task pane. Enter Q-EXFBC01.
Open your notes.ini file (likely in c:\lotus\domino\notes.ini), and verify that the ServerTask= line includes qcalcon. If it doesn’t, add it to the end of the list.

Note: You may need to provide a fully qualified hostname in step 4.

Once you’ve configured QCALCON, you can start the task.

Launch the Lotus Domino Console (or connect remotely via Domino Administrator)
Run “load qcalcon”. You should see output like this if it’s succesful:

06/26/2011 03:08:55.25 PM [08F4:0005-060C] SchMsgQHandles_New> Opening queues for LWPSCHEDGATEWAY
06/26/2011 03:08:55.25 PM [08F4:0005-060C] SchMsgQHandles_New> InputQ: 121D0h, error = 0h: No error
06/26/2011 03:08:55.25 PM [08F4:0005-060C] SchMsgQHandles_New> OutputQ: 122A8h, error = 0h: No error
06/26/2011 03:08:55.25 PM [08F4:0004-00F0] SchMsgQHandles_New> Opening queues for MAIL.BOX
06/26/2011 03:08:55.25 PM [08F4:0004-00F0] SchMsgQHandles_New> InputQ: 12380h, error = 0h: No error
06/26/2011 03:08:55.25 PM [08F4:0004-00F0] SchMsgQHandles_New> OutputQ: 12450h, error = 0h: No error
06/26/2011 03:08:55 PM QCalCon Server: Starting
06/26/2011 03:08:55 PM QCalCon Server: Version 1.0.3.10
06/26/2011 03:08:55 PM QCalCon Server: Creating queue for mail.box
06/26/2011 03:08:55 PM QCalCon Server: Creating queue for LWPSCHEDGATEWAY
06/26/2011 03:08:55 PM QCalCon Server: Started

Note: If you need to change any of the values in the QCalCon config file, you’ll need to restart the task. To do this, you can issue a “tell qcalcon quit” command in the Lotus Domino Console.

In the next post in this series, we’ll look at configuring the proper documents in the Notes configuration as well as configuring test users in Exchange.