Out Of Office – Your Out Of Office Settings Cannot Be Displayed Because The Server Is Currently Unavailable. Try Again Later

Written by Allen White on October 5, 2010. Posted in Exchange 2007, Exchange 2010, Microsoft Outlook

IT Problem

If you have microsoft exchange 2007 or microsoft exchange 2010 and you try to open the out of office settings to turn on oof, it returns an error “Your Out of Office settings cannot be displayed, because the server is currently unavailable. try again later.” Follow the guide below on how to resolve the issue with out of office not working.

IT Solution

Using Exchange Management Shell, check the URLs assigned to the web service virtual directory using the Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory command. If either the internal or external URL is missing or incorrect, then we need to set them again with the Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory command as below.

Get-WebServicesVirtualDirectory

Type or paste this line into Exchange Management Shell to check the EWS URLs

Get-webservicesvirtualdirectory | fl identity,internalurl,externalurl

If the server is configured correctly, the following, with URLs in both the InternalUrl and ExternalUrl fields.

Identity : Server_name\EWS (Default Web Site)
InternalUrl : https://server_name.your_domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx
ExternalUrl : https://owa.your_domain.com

If they are incorrect then we need to do the following..

Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory cmdlet

If the external URL is missing, then we need to set it using the Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory command as below

Set-WebServicesVirtualDirectory -Identity "Server\EWS (Default Web Site)" -InternalURL https://server_name.your_domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx -ExternalURL https://owa.your_domain.com -BasicAuthentication:$true

I have also seen this issue when you have not created an autodiscover record for your domain. In dns, create an A record called “Autodiscover”, point this record to your cas sever ( your main exchange box). Remember the Autodiscover record is used by clients do determine their mailbox settings when in ternal and external.So you must also add “autodiscover.FULLDOMAINNAME.com” to your certificate for owa to work correctly.Where FULLDOMAINNAME is your FQDN.

Tags: OWA

Allen White

Allen is an IT Consultant and holds the following accreditations. MCSA, MCSE, MCTS, MCITP, CCA, CCSP, VCP 4,5, 6 and HP ASE, AIS - Network Infrastructure.

Comments (2)

Jeff

June 24, 2011 at 7:03 pm | #

So what do you do when you run this command, get the correct response and still no one can access OOF except in owa?

Reply
- admin
  
  June 25, 2011 at 8:45 am | #
  
  Hi Jeff, I take it the outlook client is having the issue, I seen this at a school that used a proxy server in Internet Explorer. I had to add the “InternalUrl : https://server_name.your_domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx” as a proxy exclusion.
  
  Reply