Hi,

I have an installation of MS Exchange with an Instant Messaging
Server.  I am able to login & send and receive messages from one
client to another.  However, presence information is not propagated. 
That is, if user X changes his status (or logs out), user Y who has
user X on his contact list, does not see the status change for user X.
 User Y can see the updated status by logging out and back in.

I have not set up the IM server to use polling, which I realize may
cause a delay in this sort of thing.  The thing is, regular instant
messages, which are sent asynchronously, arrive almost immediately
after they are sent.

There is no firewall in between any of the clients and the server.

I believe I am using Exchange with service pack 2.  However, I checked
in the release notes on microsoft's site and there is no reference to
a bug of this nature in ANY of the service pack (or other) exchange
releases.  I also did a search in the microsoft knowledge base for
terms such as 'Instant Messaging' under exchange, and found no
articles that seemed to be useful.

I then felt it might be a misconfiguration on the MS Exchange server
(or IIS since, the IM is just an IIS component), but I have not been
able to find any place where IM specific configuration information is
stored.  (E.g. changing loglevels, etc.)  It seems like I'm doing
something wrong which is easily corrected, and I'm wondering if anyone
has seen this sort of problem, and how to solve it.

I am using the MSN Messenger client 4.6.0082

thanks in advance!

---

Clarification of Question by tom201-ga on 21 Nov 2002 13:30 PST

I have a feeling it might have something to do with a misconfiguration
with either IIS or the exchange server in general.  But I have no
background with exchange and do not know what kinds of
misconfigurations would cause such a problem.  Information relating to
more general debugging of exchange/IIS configurations would be helpful
as well.

Hi tom201-ga,
   The following MS KnowledgeBase Article documents your problem and
its solution.
   - Article 283689: Users Do Not Receive Updates When You Change Your
Status in Instant Message Service
     ( http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;283689
)
     According to the article, this issue can occur if the Anonymous
access option is not enabled on the InstMsg virtual directory in
Internet Information Services (IIS).
     The article provides step by step instructions on how you can
enable this option.

 You might also want to take a look at the following MSKB article :
  - Article 270840 XCLN: Instant Messaging Service Does Not Reflect
the Correct User Status
    ( http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;270840 )

=======================================================

You can also check out a Google Group Discussion between admins
suffering from this problem.
     - Subject: IM Not updating Contact Status
       Newsgroup: microsoft.public.exchange2000.realtime.collaboration
       ( http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&threadm=OccavEOtBHA.1628%40tkmsftngp03&rnum=3&prev=/groups%3Fhl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DISO-8859-1%26q%3Duser%2Bstatus%2Bupdate%2Bnot%26meta%3Dgroup%253Dmicrosoft.public.exchange2000.*
)

=======================================================

For a better understanding of how IM operates, you can read the
following articles :
  - Exchange 2000 Server's Instant Messaging
    by Tony Redmond
    ( http://www.win2000mag.net/Articles/Print.cfm?ArticleID=15728 )

  - RVP: A Presence and Instant Messaging Protocol
    MSDN Library Technical Article
    ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnmes2k/html/rvp.asp
)

=======================================================
Hope this solves your problem.
If you need any clarifications, just ask!
:)


=======================================================
Google Group Search Terms Used :
          im status update group:microsoft.public.exchange2000.*

The answer was very good, it fixed my problem right away!  The first
listed link answered my question.  One minor complaint is I would have
liked to receive an answer a bit faster.  Perhaps there should be an
"expected time field" when submitting the question, naturally, the
less time the asker allows for an answer to be delivered, the more he
would expect to pay.