url redirection type thingy in IIS5

[Insane]

right, this will stump a lot of people but here goes.

we have an exchange box (HQexc01) with web access running (IIS 5.1) for external offices and VPN access, but people arnt that smart at remembering urls in this place, so we want to simplify things.

we have a DNS entry called "email" pointing to the exchange server (simple) which people type into.
the default website has a quick simple HTML refresh pointing it to http://192.168.1.95/exchange to load up the authenticated user mailbox, but then the VPN users have gotten awkward and dont log onto the network

we know about the trick of putting their mailbox at the end (i.e. http://email/exchange/colin.smyth) but most of the users cant remember how to VPN correctly at the best of times, so making them remember a URL like that is impossible.

so i've been trying to see if IIS is able to pass urls through, none of the manuals i have lying around gives a sure-fire way to work.

so instead of the full length intranet url, i want to be able to have the user type in email/username into IE and have the server re-direct them to http://192.168.1.95/exchange/username
we want this to be simple so when the infrastructure moves and changes it can be quickly reconfigured in 3 seconds rather than an hour of grunt-work to re-enable it.

i know its possible through apache, but outlook web access hates apache with a passion

 

[sibanac]

reverse squid with mod_rewrite infront of the IIS
or tell them to bookmark the bloody thing

 

[Xavier]

Easiest way seems to be a simple pair of pages

the first would take their name as two form values

the second would use the request object to build the firstname.lastname string, and use response.redirect to forward to the correct URL.

Xav

 

[Insane]

thanks for the responses so far

Sibanac, squid is no-go currently, its open-source and we cant let it on our network (as to the same reason why apache is out the window for the intranet sites) so thats why im asking IIS questions
secure accreditation sucks.

Xav: i'll pass that over to our "web monkey" to knock together something,he's designing an intranet site which is "personalised" through SQL and ASP stuff for the different departments.. hopefully he wont complain with this other bit of work on his shoulders

 

[sibanac]

thanks for the responses so far

Sibanac, squid is no-go currently, its open-source and we cant let it on our network (as to the same reason why apache is out the window for the intranet sites) so thats why im asking IIS questions
secure accreditation sucks.

Got to love a system where IIS is considerd more secure then apache

 

[Xavier]

let me know if he won't write it and I'll copy+paste the guys on what he needs to do in here.


Xav

 

[Xavier]

thanks for the responses so far

Sibanac, squid is no-go currently, its open-source and we cant let it on our network (as to the same reason why apache is out the window for the intranet sites) so thats why im asking IIS questions
secure accreditation sucks.

Xav: i'll pass that over to our "web monkey" to knock together something,he's designing an intranet site which is "personalised" through SQL and ASP stuff for the different departments.. hopefully he wont complain with this other bit of work on his shoulders

Just a thought, but why not tie intranet logins and email logins together using ISAPI and then force everyone to use the intranet as their homepage - then all they'd need to do is click a handy link to email/webmail from the intranet page.

A doddle.

Xav

 

[Insane]

Got to love a system where IIS is considerd more secure then apache

its all to do with CSIG certification for confidential networks and open-source software being easily accessed and modified, i'd go into deep explination on it all but it's pointless to know really

Xav: the "web monkey" has been knocking together a couple of concept things on our dev server to see if it works right, idealistically when they access the intranet site they will have to authenticate anyway with the server to confirm they have access to read the data, so tying it in with the web frontend is quite easy from that point of view, its just making sure it points people to the right mailbox if they click the link (we are thinking of cheating and just using the %username% variable that comes with windows )

a quickfix is just giving VPN users a group policy of internet explorer's home page of http://email/exchange/%username%, and hope that works for the time being for the people who cant remember urls.

i've just been told by J to stop calling him the web monkey

again, thanks for all the help