With so many devices out there today using Active Sync I decided to write about some of the basics of trouble shooting active sync. But remember in some cases there is not a fix. Because Microsoft has the standards out on the internet any company wanting to implement Active sync can however they all may not implement it the same. As can be shown here at the Exchange ActiveSync Client Comparison Table as well as here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Exchange_ActiveSync_Clients.  Which is all good information however when a user can’t connect where do I start?

First of all when someone calls saying they can’t connect the first place I look is to open a Exchange Management shell. The command most commonly used would be

get-activesyncdevice This command gives you a lot of basic information to start with. the first command I would run is

Get-Activesyncdevice –mailbox “username” |fl userdisplayname,device*

This will usually give you all the devices the user has and in a format that is easily readable. you should see something like the following pay close attention to the highlighted lines:

UserDisplayName         : company.local/devision/Users/group/johnDoe
DeviceId                : droid1279548654527
DeviceImei              : 351863041439098
DeviceMobileOperator    : AT&T
DeviceOS                : Android
DeviceOSLanguage        : English
DeviceTelephoneNumber   : *******8888
DeviceType              : SAMSUNGSAMSUNGSGH
DeviceUserAgent         : SAMSUNGSAMSUNGSGH/100
DeviceModel             : SAMSUNG-SGH-I897
DeviceAccessState       : Allowed
DeviceAccessStateReason : Global
DeviceAccessControlRule :
DeviceActiveSyncVersion : 14.1

UserDisplayName         : company.local/devision/Users/group/johnDoe
DeviceId                : droid1279548654527
DeviceImei              :
DeviceMobileOperator    :
DeviceOS                :
DeviceOSLanguage        :
DeviceTelephoneNumber   :
DeviceType              : Android
DeviceUserAgent         : Android/0.3
DeviceModel             : Android
DeviceAccessState       : Allowed
DeviceAccessStateReason : Global
DeviceAccessControlRule :
DeviceActiveSyncVersion : 12.0

There are 3 attributes I am concerned with. DeviceAccessState, DeviceAccessStateReason, DeviceActiveSyncVersion and sometimes I am concerned about DeviceUserAgent

DeviceAccessState will tell me if the device is blocked or allowed. So if I am troubleshooting and it says allowed then I need to look elsewhere, more at connectivity and is my CAS or the account working appropriately.

If DeviceAccessState is listed as blocked then I want to look at the reason. The DeviceAccessStateReason can contain the following properties per MSDN article

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.exchange.data.directory.systemconfiguration.deviceaccessstatereason(v=exchg.140)

:

DeviceAccessStateReason Property:

Since the MSDN article does not indicate what each of the property’s relate too. it may be difficult to find the exact problem at this point.

However if it says Global I have found that this is related to the global allow, block quarantine policy’s.

If it says Policy then this is usually related to either the policy was not applied to the device or there is something in the policy that the phone does not conform to.

If it says’ individual. then I start looking at things like get-casmailbox with the following commands

Get-casmailbox –id “username” |fl activesync*

It should return the following

ActiveSyncAllowedDeviceIDs            :{}

ActiveSyncBlockedDeviceIDS           :{}

ActiveSyncMailboxPolicy                  : Policyname

ActiveSyncMailboxPolicyisDefaulted :False

ActiveSyncDebuggingLogging

ActiveSyncEnabled                         :True

Sometimes this will point me in the right direction. Sometimes I have to turn on diagnostic logging on the device to find out what is happening. But the above should be a good start for general purposes. And initial investigation.

Remember this is just my way of doing it there may be others. Please investigate all options.