Making the OWA Login Page the Default Page on a Web Site

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Making the OWA Login Page the Default Page on a Web Site

If you have a specific machine for Outlook Web Access, you may want users to go to http://mail.example.com instead of http://mail.example.com/owa/ . This is a simple change to the default web site on the machine that is hosting OWA.

It is more effective when used with Forms Based Authentication enabled, as the users get a web page immediately - and without any authentication prompts - providing a level of confirmation that they have hit the correct address.

Windows 2003

For Windows 2008 see further below

Start IIS Manager
Right click on the "Default Web Site" and choose "Properties".
Click on the "Home Directory" tab.
Change the first option to "A redirection to a URL".
Enter "/owa" in to the box (minus quotes). If you are co-existing with Exchange 2003 use /exchange instead.
For SBS users, you could also change the URL to /remote and have the remote web workplace as you default site as an alternative.
Change the entry below to "A directory below URL entered".
Click Apply/OK.
If you are prompted about changing child objects, click cancel so that nothing else is changed.
Close the IIS Manager.
Test.

Complete Configuration Screenshot - Windows 2003

The screenshot below shows a complete configuration using the /exchange version of the URL.

Fig 1: Screenshot - Default Web Site configured for OWA to be the default home page - Windows 2003

Windows 2008 (including SBS 2008)

For Windows 2008, you must use the default web page method. The HTTP redirect option within IIS Manager does not work, and will cause a loop and stop OWA from functioning. Save the code below as index.htm and place it in the root of the web site (wwwroot on a default installation). However the code below is for a native Exchange 2007 machine. If you are co-existing with Exchange 2003 then change the /owa/ to /exchange/ .

For SBS users, you could also change the URL to /remote and have the remote web workplace as you default site instead.

<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0; URL=/owa/"> <title>Redirect</title> </head> <body> <p><a href="/owa/">Redirect</a></p> </body> </html>

Redirection to HTTPS URL.

If you are allowing users to connect to the server using a non-HTTPS URL (http://host.example.com/owa) but want them to use HTTPS instead, then you can use the following code instead:

<html> <head> <meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0; URL=https://host.example.com/owa/"> <title>Redirect</title> </head> <body> <p><a href="https://host.example.com/owa/">Redirect</a></p> </body> </html>

Change the host.example.com part of the URL in both places to your actual host name.