Communicating with Exchange in .NET

Question

I would like to use Exchange e-mail groups as an authentication scheme for an internal app. IE, if a user is in a certain mailing group, they are allowed in.

Any pointers on where to look for information with talking with Exchange from .NET?

EDIT: Exchange 2003.

Answer 1

If you have Exchange 2007 you could use the web service interface to talk to Exchange from .NET.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb408417.aspx

I haven't used this interface yet though, so I'm not sure whether it is suitable for your scenario.

Otherwise I'm afraid that you must use the old MAPI/COM libraries.

Answer 2

Exchange 2003 supports a webdav interface. You might want to take a look at it to see if it supports what you need. There is a WebDav .Net for Exchange library here: http://www.independentsoft.de/webdavex/index.html

see more info here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/263724/using-webdav-to-access-exchange-2003-inbox

Answer 3

Exchange access from your own software is pretty simple. Use the HTTP sockets found in .net to connect and some basic reverse engineering to parse the exchange servers output.

Answer 4

You don't need to talk to Exchange itself. All of the data is stored in Active Directory which has very simple to use APIs within the .NET framework. Exchange e-mail groups are stored in AD as global distribution groups. All you need to do is ask if the user is a member of a specific group.

Answer 5

Are you sure you want to do this with distribution groups? Wouldn't it be more manageable in the long run to turn those distribution groups into security groups, and use Windows authentication?