Interoperability between Amazon WorkMail and Microsoft Exchange
Interoperability between Amazon WorkMail and Microsoft Exchange Server allows you to minimize disruption to your users as you migrate mailboxes to Amazon WorkMail, or use Amazon WorkMail for a subset of your corporate mailboxes.
This interoperability allows you to use the same corporate domain for mailboxes across both environments. This way, your users can schedule meetings with bidirectional sharing of calendar free/busy status information.
Prerequisites
Before you enable interoperability with Microsoft Exchange, do the following:
Make sure you have at least one user enabled for Amazon WorkMail This is required to configure availability settings for Microsoft Exchange. To enable a user, follow the steps in Enable email routing for a user.
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Set up an Active Directory (AD) Connector. Setting up an AD Connector with your on-premises directory allows users to continue using their existing corporate credentials. For more information, see Create an AD Connector and Integrate Amazon WorkMail with your on-premises directory.
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Set up your Amazon WorkMail organization. Create an Amazon WorkMail organization that uses the AD Connector that you set up.
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Add your corporate domains to your Amazon WorkMail organization and then verify them in the Amazon WorkMail console. Otherwise, emails sent to this alias will bounce. For more information, see Working with domains.
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Migrate mailboxes to Amazon WorkMail.Enable users to provision and migrate mailboxes from your on-premises environment to Amazon WorkMail. For more information, see Enable existing users and see Migrating to Amazon WorkMail.
Note
Do not update DNS records to point to Amazon WorkMail. This ensures that Microsoft Exchange remains the primary server for incoming email for as long as you want interoperability between the two environments.
Make sure that the User Principal Names (UPNs) in Active Directory match the users' primary SMTP addresses.
Amazon WorkMail makes HTTPS requests to the Exchange Web Services (EWS) URL on Microsoft Exchange to obtain calendar free/busy information.
For EWS-based availability providers, Amazon WorkMail makes HTTPS requests to the Exchange Web Services (EWS) URL on Microsoft Exchange to obtain calendar free/busy information. Hence, the following prerequisites only apply to EWS-based availability providers.
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Ensure that the relevant firewall settings are set up to allow access from the internet. The default port for HTTPS requests is port 443.
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Amazon WorkMail can only make successful HTTPS requests to the EWS URL on Microsoft Exchange when a certificate signed by a valid certificate authority (CA) is available in your Microsoft Exchange environment. For more information, see Create an Exchange Server certificate request for a certification authority
on the Microsoft Exchange Documentation website. -
You must enable Basic Authentication for EWS in Microsoft Exchange. For more information, see Virtual directories: Exchange 2013
on the Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog.
Add domains and enable mailboxes
Add your corporate domains to Amazon WorkMail so that they can be used in email addresses. Ensure that the domains added to Amazon WorkMail are verified, and then enable users and groups to provision mailboxes on Amazon WorkMail. Resources can't be enabled in Amazon WorkMail while in interoperability mode, and should be re-created in Amazon WorkMail after you disable interoperability mode. However, you can still use them to schedule meetings while in interoperability mode. Resources from Microsoft Exchange are always shown in the Users tab in Amazon WorkMail.
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For more information, see Add domains, Enable existing users, and Enable an existing group.
Note
To ensure interoperability with Microsoft Exchange, don't update the DNS records to point to Amazon WorkMail records. Microsoft Exchange remains the primary server for incoming email as long as you want interoperability between the two environments.
Enable interoperability
If you have not created an Amazon WorkMail organization, you can use the public API to create a new WorkMail Organization with interoperability mode enabled.
If you already have an Amazon WorkMail organization with an AD Connector linked to Active
Directory, and you also have Microsoft Exchange, contact AWS
Support
Create service accounts in Microsoft Exchange and Amazon WorkMail
Note
Creating a service account in Exchange is not required when Exchange is not used as a back-end for custom availability provider.
To access calendar free/busy information, create a service account on both Microsoft Exchange and Amazon WorkMail. The Microsoft Exchange service account is any user on Microsoft Exchange that has access to the calendar free/busy information of other Exchange users. Access is granted by default; so no special permissions are required.
Similarly, the Amazon WorkMail service account is any user on Amazon WorkMail that has access to calendar free/busy information of other Amazon WorkMail users. This is also granted by default. You must create the Amazon WorkMail user in your on-premises directory, and then enable that user for Amazon WorkMail, to integrate Amazon WorkMail with AD Connector into your directory.
Limitations in interoperability mode
When your organization is in interoperability mode, you must use the Exchange admin center to manage all users, groups, and resources. To enable Amazon WorkMail users and groups, use the AWS Management Console. For more information, see Enable existing users and Enable an existing group.
When enabling a user or group for Amazon WorkMail, you can't edit the email addresses or aliases of those users and groups. Those must also be configured via the Exchange admincenter. Amazon WorkMail synchronizes changes in your directory every four hours.
Resources can't be created or enabled in Amazon WorkMail while in interoperability mode. However, all of your Exchange resources are available in the Amazon WorkMail address book and can be used for scheduling meetings as usual.
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