Publishing IMAP, POP and SMTP settings via Exchange 2010 OWA

Do you allow your users to connect to Exchange 2010 directly via IMAP, POP and SMTP? If you do then not only will some Exchange admins call you crazy…  but you'll probably have to document the client settings such as server names, port and encryption settings somewhere and distribute it to users.

In Exchange 2010 there is actually somewhere to publish these settings - and once configured your documentation won't need to be updated if the server details change. You'll find these settings by logging into OWA, and choosing Options. The link "Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access…" should be shown on the default "My Account" page:



By default, nothing will be listed if you click the link:



To configure these links, it's a fairly straightforward process. Before you begin, you need to know what the settings should be and in the case of the SMTP settings, which receive connector on which Hub Transport this relates to.

First, you configure the Client Access servers for the POP and IMAP settings, using the Set-POPSettings and Set-IMAPSettings cmdlets with the -ExternalConnectionSettings parameter.

For each protocol you specify a colon-separated list of values for the ExternalConnectionSettings. For POP3 with TLS, this might be "casserver.contoso.com:110:tls" or POP3 with SSL might be "casserver.contoso.com:995:ssl". IMAP with TLS might be "casserver.contoso.com:143:tls" and IMAP with SSL might be "casserver.contoso.com:993:ssl".

Here's a quick example of the commands against my test setup:

Set-POPSettings -ExternalConnectionSettings "mail.contoso.com:110:tls"Set-IMAPSettings -ExternalConnectionSettings "mail.contoso.com:143:tls"

It's important to remember, you need to run the command on all Client Access servers users will access.
Next, you need to allow the receive connector that you want "published" to advertise it's settings. You do this with the Set-ReceiveConnector cmdlet specifying the -AdvertiseClientSettings:$true parameter and value.
In my example, I want to advertise the port 587 "client" receive connector on my Hub Transport server:

et-ReceiveConnector -Identity "hubtransport\Client HUBTRANSPORT" -AdvertiseClientSettings:$true

Finally, run iisreset to restart IIS on each Client Access Server, the log back into OWA (well, ECP) and test the "Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access…"  link again. It should now show the settings specified:



For further reading check out Set-IMAPSettings, Set-POPSettings and Set-ReceiveConnector.
(Just a footnote- thanks to Jag at Microsoft for providing this information)