KB : Application support for WEBDAV to access Exchange Server?

Do you know the support that is available for applications that use the Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) protocol to access Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server or Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 ?

What is supported?

Microsoft support the use of the WebDAV protocol for the following items:

•Non-recurring appointments
•Contacts in Microsoft Outlook that you create or modify
•Folders that you create in Outlook and in Exchange 2000 Server or Exchange Server 2003
•E-mail messages that you create or modify

Note You cannot use the WebDAV protocol to access the Rich Text Format (RTF) body of an e-mail message.

All other tasks that use the WebDAV protocol to modify a Web store in Exchange 2000 Server or in Exchange Server 2003 are not supported.
Note These limitations do not apply to Outlook Web Access URLs.

Why it's not supported?

Because of limitations that exist when you create items that are compatible with Outlook, we do not support complex calendaring when you use the WebDAV protocol. Complex calendaring applications include the following items:

•Recurring appointments
•Meeting functionality
Note Meeting functionality includes sending, modifying, and canceling meetings.

What are the alternatives?

For applications that require complex calendaring functionality with Exchange 2000 Server or with Exchange Server 2003, we recommend that you use the following API's:

•Collaboration Data Objects for Exchange 2000 Server (CDOEX)
•Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) 1.21
•Outlook Object Model

These API's include additional logic that is required to make the created items work correctly with Outlook. This additional logic is not available when you use the WebDAV protocol. for more information please find the following MSDN KB.