Searching through the logs pointed me in the direction of the Exchange services and sure enough one of the services had not started automatically as it should have. The service in question was the Microsoft Exchange System Attendant. Starting this service resolved the issue straight away. I have since restarted the server and the service continues to not start automatically. One to watch…

• Start -> Administrative Tools -> Services
• Right-Click Microsoft Exchange System Attendant service
• Select Start from displayed context menu

Our school also uses Google Apps Education Edition to provide our students with Email accounts and usage of the other Google Apps services. Google provides a great LDAP sync tool that can easily sync users and groups memberships but lacks a way to sync users passwords (not secure). For this to be possible a Single Sign On (SSO) system must come into the equation. These systems can cost thousands of dollars (depending on user numbers) from 3rd party developers or require a large amount of IT admin time and server resources to perfect a solid solution. I searched long and hard for a suitable tool for this job and tried a number of solutions but none worked well enough for my liking.

At the same time that I was searching for solutions for this issue I was also browsing around for some useful Moodle plugins. This is where I came across the Moodle-Google Intergration plugin that would solve all my issues. The plugin provides a SAML based authentication method to allow users to use their LDAP credentials (LDAP must be configured in Moodle) to log into their Google Apps account. This plugin talks with the SSO feature built into Google Apps via SAML 2.0 post and the use of the generated keys and certificates for security. Users then login to Moodle and from there can access their Google Apps account.

More to come on the configuration of this plugin. Stay tuned…