HI, We need the feature that AutoDL 2.1 offers. We have found it on Exhange 2000 resource Kit (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb288467.aspx) but not in Exchange 2003. Is this supported in Exchange 2003 and where cna I get it. The feature set I'm looking for is 1. The ability to set managers for each distribution list. 2. A web UI that allows users to subscribe to lists they want to join 3. Automated approval request is sent to the manager 4. Users is added to the DL if approved, notified if rejected... 5. A similar process to allow users to remove themselves from DLs. Suggestions appreciated. Thanks. Sujan

I spent quite a bit of time trying to get AutoDL to work on time, and, it does work. Usually. But it is a lot of work and it is not supported. It really does not depend on E2K or E2K3 since it interfaces with Active Directory, not with the Exchange server. You are probably better off looking for a third party product that will do this. I doubt that Microsoft is going to ever update AutoDL ever again and if you start using it, you are going to get yourself in to a situation where you are using a product that may not work with a future version of either Active Directory or Exchange. You might want to look at something like Imanami's WebDir, The Dot Net Factory's EmpowerID, or NameScape.

A few years back, I setup AutoDL and then threw it away because of all the issues it was having. We researched, and for the buck, Webdir was our choice. Since then, there have been many upgrades to Webdir. The latest version is very configurable. Also, it has bonus features you can allow users to access such as updating their AD records. It is very easy to setup (Nothing like AudoDL) and is a very light app. It can be thrown on almost any member server without causing issues. Just to note, I don't work for Imanami or get kickbacks...

AutoDL is a great little program written by Microsoft as an example distribution list management tool. We have used it for years, starting back in 2001 when we first installed Exchange 2000. We had some issues and never could get version 2.1 to really work so we abandoned hope for that. When we encountered some issues, we asked Microsoft to: provide the source code for some of the utilities and tools so we could modify them put the source code in the public domain so that we could form a group to continue supporting it Obviously, Microsoft refused but that did not deter us. We found how to keep it working with Exchange 2003 and we are still using it today. We recently upgraded to Exchange 2010 and thought all hope of using Autodl was out the window. We encountered problems right away with the X.500 mail addresses as the string is limited to 100 characters in AutoDL and Exchange 2010 uses some really long names and strings beyond that limit. However, being resourceful engineers, we opened to stored procedures and the database tables to identify those areas and increased it to 200 charactesrs. That is no guarantee of success, but we gave it a shot. Well, the great news is that we have AutoDL working on a Windows 2003 server with IIS 6.0 against an Exchange 2010 set of servers (2 CAS/HT and 2 MBOX). Our domain n controllers are Windows 2008 R2 servers and our functional level is 2003. I am thinking of publishing a guide on how others can get this working on their environment. We've done a lot of things over time that we may have to reconstruct so if anyone wants to help with this project or needs help, let me know.

Steve, I am definitely interested in your solution. Would you be able to share? Thanks in advanceRene Lariviere