Inside Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Web Services

Autodiscover Providers

For a given mailbox user account, there is a plethora of information available in Active Directory. However, it is unlikely that a client application that needs configuration information will require all of the data from Active Directory. In fact, different client applications will require different data. These differing requirements are embodied in Autodiscover providers. Different providers will return different data for an equivalent request. In Exchange Server 2007, there are two different providers available: the Outlook provider and the MobileSync provider.

The Outlook Provider

The Outlook provider was originally developed to allow Office Outlook 2007 to retrieve information for configuring e-mail accounts that communicate ...