A reader named Charles writes:

"We are trying to automate the login to OWA (Outlook Web Access). Do you know if it can be done, and if so, how? Secondly, we want to get Calendars up and running in OWA (we only use it for email now). We need help in setting it up. We want a shared calendar for all of us (5-6 people), as well as individual calendars."

Charles went on to say that his company is using Small Business Server 2000, which includes Exchange 2000. This means he can use a public folder calendar for his group and it'll be accessible using OWA. If his company used Exchange 5.5, Charles could not use OWA for viewing a public folder calendar, since only the mailbox calendar is accessible from OWA. Opening a public folder calendar actually displays the contents of the default folder in the mailbox.

The first question (automated login to OWA) is easy to answer. If you are accessing OWA from a computer that is authenticated on the network and are using Internet Explorer 4 or higher, you can have automated logons if the OWA server is configured correctly. If your users are connecting to OWA from outside the network, an automated logon could be a security issue.

You need to configure the Exchange virtual web (OWA) on the IIS Server to use Integrated Windows Authentication, (formerly known as NTLM, or NT Challenge/Response). If using IE6, it needs to be configured to allow Integrated Windows Authentication. You'll find this setting in Tools | Options Advanced tab, scroll down to Security options and check Enable Integrated Windows Authentication. Once this is enabled, you can access OWA without entering the username and password, if you use a URL that includes the username: http://your_exchange_domain.com/exchange/username/.

Since anyone who has access to a computer can easily access the logged on user's mail, many administrators consider automatic logons a security issue and disable integrated authentication in IE6.

For a group calendar, the best option is to create a public folder calendar and give your group permission to the calendar. There are a few things to keep in mind when using OWA for public calendars, such as all new appointments are added to the users default calendar--this is the calendar in their mailbox. To add new appointments to a Public Folder calendar, you need to open that calendar before creating a new appointment. You can use scripting or the Folder Assistant to copy appointments from the public folder to the mailbox calendar, since reminders won't fire from the public folder calendar either, although Ken Slovak of Slovaktech.com is working on an add-in that will fire reminders in public folders.

Diane Poremsky is the president of CDOLive LLC and a Microsoft Outlook MVP. She's coauthor of Word 2002: The Complete Reference (Osborne, 2001) and Beginning Visual Basic 6 Application Development (for Wrox Press). For questions or suggestions for future columns, write her at outlook@cdolive.com.