Announcing Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer (MCA) 1.0 and Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer (RCA) 2.1

[The_Exchange_Team]

Back in November 2012, we announced our MCA Beta client. We have been very busy working to improve the testing options that are available from the MCA client. Here’s what we’ve built for the 1.0 release:

 

Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer Tool 1.0

We are excited to announce the 1.0 release of the Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer.  This tool is a companion to the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer web site.  The MCA tool provides administrators and end users with the ability to run connectivity diagnostics for five common connectivity symptoms directly from their local computer.  Users can test their own connectivity, and save results in an HTML format that administrators will recognize from viewing results on the RCA website. 

Install the MCA 1.0 tool here: https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com/?tabid=client

Watch the Introduction Video:

The MCA tool offers five test symptoms:

• “I can’t log on with Office Outlook” – This test is equivalent to the Exchange RCA test for “Outlook Anywhere (RPC over HTTP)”. There is an option to run the SSO test provided on the parameters page.
• “I can’t send or receive email on my mobile device”.   – This test is equivalent to the Exchange RCA test for Exchange ActiveSync.
• ***New MCA Test*** “I can’t log on to Lync on my mobile device or the Lync Windows Store App” – This test checks for the Domain Name Server (DNS) records for your on-premise domain to ensure they are configured correctly for supporting Mobile Lync clients. Also it connects to the Autodiscover web service and makes sure that the authentication, certificate, web service for Mobility is correctly set up
• ***New MCA Test*** “I can’t send or receive email from Outlook (Office 365 only)” – This test checks Inbound/Outbound SMTP mail flow and also includes Domain Name Server validation checks for O365 customers.
• ***New MCA Test*** “I can’t view free/busy information of another user” – This test verifies that an Office 365 mailbox can access the free/busy information of an on-premises mailbox, and vice versa (one direction per test run).

Microsoft Lync Connectivity Analyzer Tool:  You will also notice the Lync Connectivity Analyzer Tool on the client page.  We are working on combining MCA with MLCA in the near future but wanted to make both these great tools available to customers now to improve our client diagnostics options. To learn more about MLCA – go HERE

Feedback: Send all feedback to the MCA Feedback alias.  Please let us know what you think of the tool and whether this will be helpful in troubleshooting connectivity scenarios. Also feel free to provide feedback on additional tests you would like to see added in the future.

Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer 2.1

We are excited to announce the 2.1 release of the Microsoft Remote Connectivity Analyzer web site.  The tool provides administrators and end users with the ability to run connectivity diagnostics for our servers to test common issues with Exchange, Lync and Office 365.  We have added new Office 365 Domain Name Server tests, enhanced existing tests, and improved the overall site experience.

Check out the updates to the website here: https://testconnectivity.microsoft.com

Here are the highlights of the 2.1 RCA release:

Version 2.1 (March 2013)

• Added support for localized language support for 60 languages
• Updated version of the downloadable Microsoft Connectivity Analyzer v1.0 Tool for troubleshooting connectivity from the local machine
• Added Microsoft Lync Connectivity Analyzer downloadable tool for troubleshooting Lync issues from the local machine
• Added Office 365 General Tests section
• Added Office 365 Exchange Domain Name Server (DNS) Connectivity Test

Enjoy!

Thanks.

Brian Feck on behalf of the entire MCA/RCA team.
Follow the team on Twitter - @ExRCA

[#2]

There should also be a 32-bit version I wonder if every corporation has 64-bit client Win7.

And surprisingly there is no XP version available?

[#3]

The LYNC test is still not working.  I successfully verify the characters box, but nothing happens when I press Perform Test.  Any thoughts?

Thanks

[#4]

I don't see a 64-bit requirement, except for Vista.  And XP?  That's several versions back now, with extended support ending next year.  Hardly surprising that it's not a supported OS.

[#5]

Steve, you are not alone man. The Lync test doesn't do anything at all. This is definitely version "1.0" stuff here.

[#6]

This tool keeps throwing error "Deployment and application do not have matching security zones." and will not install.

[#7]

I've tried to install this on my Windows 8 Enterprise workstation and a co-workers Windows 7 machine (both 64 bit), but I keep getting the following error:

<b>Activation of C:UsersrtuckettDownloadsMicrosoft.Exchange.Connectivity.Analysis.Tool.application resulted in exception.</b>

Any idea on how to solve this?

[#8]

I have tried to install this twice now. I've rebooted my machine and made absolutely sure the .NET 4.5 was installed. I am running Windows 8 Pro. I am running 8 GB memory (64-bit ws) and an intel i7 quad processor. From looking at the setup logs, it appears to be an issue with the following file not working:

microsoft.exchange.connectivity.analysis.ui.exe

I suspect there will be a version 1.1 of this tool released soon, but in the meantime how do I fix this problem and get this installed? Otherwise, I have to continue to use the not so great Outlook CTRL-SHIFT tool instead of this one.

[#9]

So, the security zone issue is the result of either:

1.  Saving the clickonce deployment and running it or

2. Running ina  browser without clickonce support (FF & Chrome both support it, but require extensions).  The boostrapper (.exe link) will work fine whether you have the extensions.

Mike & Randy, are there exceptions logged in the event logs?  If so, mail them to our feedback alias and I'll dig into them.

[#10]

Got it to install on my second w7 machine, but I cannot get it to run on my w8 machine. A few issues. First, the Lync test doesn't appear to work. You click "Perform Test" and nothing happens. This feature appears to be broken and/or does not like something about my configuration. Second, it doesn't appear to pick up my SCP records, and rather seems to fall-back on the standard DNS zone records. Is there any way to get the test to see the standard SCP forest zone configuration correctly? All in all, the tool doesn't appear to work at all correctly for me.

[#11]

@xC0000005,

That appears to have been the issue with the security. Once I manually saved the file and ran it, rather than going through IE, the security error seems to have gone away. Dang if it isn't always an issue with IE.

Thank you!

Might want to update the install notes to always manually download. This is the only file/site I ever remember having to do this with, so there is definitely something wrong with IE, the download site, or something. Having to separately manage downloads and installs and figure out how to run a simple program = a bug somewhere.

:)

[#12]

For the Lync tests not working concerns.  We have a pre-req for the Unified Communications Managed API 4.0 (UCMA) DLLs for the Lync test to work properly.  We aren't able to ship them with the product at this time.  To install the DLLs - go here - www.microsoft.com/.../details.aspx.  We will work on improving the pre-req check/handling in a future release.

For the installation issues, we need to work directly with each of you to see the exception error details.  Please send us email to mcafeedback@microsoft.com with as many details as you can share about what is breaking and we'll do our best to troubleshoot those issues and get things working.

As always, feel free to send direct feedback to mcafeedback@microsoft.com.

Thanks.

The MCA Team

[#13]

The MCA has problems downloading, throws activation errors, and now we find out that the entire Lync section is unusable due to a known pre-req not shipping? Slap me silly, but this appears to be unfinished and was rushed out the door too soon. You launched it without half (Lync) the features working right.

I thought we were over this issue with the last round of embarassing RU updates and recalls. Is that what is going on now in the world of Exchange? Just release half-finished code to the world?

[#14]

The Free/Busy lookup doesn't work internally.

The tool prompts for the UPN of a user, but treats the UPN as an email address for the purposes of an Autodiscover lookup, and our UPN suffixes are different from our email addresses.

The manual Specify Target Availaiblity Service Server FQDN appears to be ignored because the results show the tool is still looking for the autodiscover service based upon the UPN domain suffix.

Since walking a user through using a tool like this remotely will be complicated enough, could you add the source mailbox email address and use that for the Autodiscover lookup instead of having the user manually specify a FQDN of a server (which they won't understand on top of it currently not working)?

[#15]

@MCATeam,

So, in effect what the MCA team is saying is, the product wasn't finished properly and was rushed out the door.

Okay, glad to know. I think I'll skip this mess and just wait for version 1.1 thank you very much.

[#16]

Thanks, Dan, for the great feedback. If a target Availability Service server FQDN is specified in the free/busy test, it is used only in the query to get the target user’s availability. All other functions of the test rely upon Autodiscover.

The free/busy test currently does not support using an email address that is different than the UPN, but we will look to add this feature in an upcoming release.