Exchange idiot here, bear with me

[Ev0]

Firstly, I apologise for the poorness of my knowledge and the exchange setup I'm about to talk about. It was a quick and dirty way of doing it which has been working flawlessly (and still would be...) for a good number of years now

Right, my folks have an SBS2003 server that uses the POP3 connector (I know, I know) to pull down email for various accounts from the company who host and do all their website stuff.

Now they emailed my folks at 20:30 on Friday night saying that they are moving all the logins over to SSL connections and gave out new passwords.

So of course I don't get wind of this until about midday today, and annoyingly I'm out all day and night until now so can't sort it.

Only now do I find out the provided POP3 connector doesn't do ssl, doh.

So a quick nose around and a third party connector is bought to tide them over (just doing that now).

But my real question is how easy/what needs doing to move this setup over to their exchange server doing it all, i.e. removing the pop3 stuff?

Is it a case of getting the MX records changed to point to their server for that email domain (they are on a fixed IP)?

Again forgive me for my n00bishness, I've never really done anything ever with exchange in all my years in IT!

Of course my folks don't (or won't) understand any of this, they don't use the computers heavily bar a few emails here and there and typing up a few docs but I know best practice would dictate a change is needed.

It's also a case of time and me not having much to sort them out

 

[Ev0]

Might be worth looking at a hosted solution?

They won't go for this as it costs money They are tight and to them as it is now it works (well now I bought the new pop3 connector) so what's the problem lol

Can honestly say their IT spend in the last 2 years has been well less than a grand and that was only fo ra new server for a remote office. Take that out of the figures and you're talking about 60 quid for the software I bought last night and a few quid for my time, and that's about it in 6 years!

 

[Ev0]

I'd just leave it as it is, yes a proper smtp setup would be better practice but the setup they have now is working fine and fullfills there needs. The question you need to ask yourself is what business value will your proposed changes add? To which I think the likely answer is none.

Yup exactly, nail on head. Whilst it's not the best practice way of doing things it was always the best for the customer (well, my parents ).

pop3 hosting is included at no charge with their current deal, and the guys are very quick to add new addresses not that there's ever a time critical situation for them. They only have 2 members of staff

I am going to leave it for now but tell them I can do it if need be and that the only noticible difference to them would be emails get to them instantly rather than having to wait up to 15mins for the pop3 connector to run.

 

[Ev0]

Plus all the additional functionality of a fully fledged exchange environment, public folders, exclaimer etc....

But for 2 users, pop3 would be fine imo.

Yup but they don't need or would even begin to understand that lol.

I've tried getting them to use their diaries at least for things but that went over their heads