running an Exchange Server while still using a third party e-mail provider

i would like to run an exchange server in-house, so staff can use shared calendars and other features, but i don't have to time to manage our own in-house e-mail system, is there a way to set up an exchange server so that all e-mails coming from our e-mail service provider pop on my exchange server first, then get distributed, without me having to manage all those e-mail boxes within Exchange?

any help would be greatly appericated.

From my perspective the management issue is the part of Exchange bellied up to the Internet, keeping up to date on the risks of Exchange to the outside.  I'm currently running Exchange on SBS 2003 for a handful of users and Exchange POPs the email for each of these users into their individual Exchange mail box using the included POP3 connector for SBS exchange.  The rest of the users use the provider's webmail to access their email.  In small business server the new user wizard handles setting up the exchange mail box, I add the POP3 connection and it runs.  I presume you have to manage the user accounts for login to the network so add and change is going to happen anyway.

Dave

so what you are saying is, setup your Exchange Server as normal but instead of creating exchange mailboxes, just point the server to our providers POP3 address?

maybe?

You will still have to set up the mail boxes in Exchange.  I'm not sure if you can even share calendars and contacts with someone if they don't have an exchange mail box as what would the user log into to get the calendar?  My process of using the POP connector allows my ISP's spam filter to prescan the mail and as far as anyone is concerned, our mail host is the ISP solution not Exchange.

Perhaps Google Apps with documents and calendars or Yahoo calendars would fill your need?

Dave

Dave is right, everyone needs an exchange mailbox in order to share calendars.  Once you have all the mailboxes set up, you don't have to manage the permissions, though.  People can manage their own permissions (as in who has access to who's calendar and other items) through Tools/Options/Delegates...

ok, so i will still need to create mailboxes for everyone, but they will all be fed from our current e-mail service provider, and i won't have to manage a POP3 server, right?

Right, your provider will manage POP3.  Here's what I would do:

1. Create email box for user at provider, use a strong password for POP3 (https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm provides some pretty ridiculous ones for you to use, I generally use about 10-20 characters of the third option)
   • you may want to record these passwords in a text file in a secure location on the server for troubleshooting later
2. Create the user in Active Directory with an Exchange mailbox
3. Configure the POP3 connector for that user to download email from the provider, using the strong ridiculous password generated above
   • note the POP3 connector is only included with Small Business Server editions of Windows, not full Exchange editions
   • i have no explanation why, its just the way Microsoft licensed it

I'm assuming your users already use POP3 with Outlook.  You will want to import their PST file into their Exchange mailbox.  Let us know if you need help with this.

Outbound email may also be a problem.  You might have to configure Exchange to direct all outbound email to the provider's SMTP server.  You do this so that your mail is sent and received by the same servers and helps with preventing your email being marked as spam (although this method has pros and cons as well).  Some providers require you to enter a username and password in order to authenticate to their server as a relay.  I am under the impression this is only available from Exchange 2007 / Small Business Server 2008.  In order to do this with Exchange 2003 you have to jump through a couple hoops.  Additionally, if you don't have a business account from your Internet Service Provider, they might be blocking all outbound email on port 25 that isn't being directed to their own mail servers (with authentication).  If that is the case, you may need to upgrade to a business account.  It wouldn't hurt to have a static IP address either - that way your users will be able to use the Outlook Web Access if you get this configured.

What Chris said is exactly what I am doing with exchange in SBS 2003.  I did set up an outgoing email account with the ISP that Exchange authenticates to for sending,  (There is an exact Microsoft term for this in Exchange which I will try to look up tomorrow)  any email sent from a user looks like it came from the user not the sending account.

Dave