EWS: ExpandDL documentation is wrong

I am not certain how prevalent this issue is in the wild and/or if anyone else has encountered it or had to workaround it, but there is a documentation bug that had me pulling my hair our for nearly a week.

If you have a need to get the members of an Exchange public distribution group using Exchange Web Services (EWS) ExpandDL operation via SOAP, and you followed this documentation, you will have encountered this super unhelpful error:

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
	<!– Note: EwsEditor has replaced the "utf-16" text in the first line with"utf-8" in order for the XML to render in the response web control. –>
	<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
	<s:Body>
	<s:Fault>
	<faultcode xmlns:a="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">a:ErrorInternalServerError</faultcode>
	<faultstring xml:lang="en-US">An internal server error occurred. The operation failed.</faultstring>
	<detail>
	<e:ResponseCode xmlns:e="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/errors">ErrorInternalServerError</e:ResponseCode>
	<e:Message xmlns:e="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/errors">An internal server error occurred. The operation failed.</e:Message>
	</detail>
	</s:Fault>
	</s:Body>
	</s:Envelope>

view raw

ewsservererror.xml

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

The problem is that the documentation is wrong. The namespaces used and the namespace prefixes are wrong. Here is what is on the documentation site:

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
	<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/"
	xmlns:t="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
	<soap:Body>
	<ExpandDL xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages"
	xmlns:t="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
	<t:Mailbox>
	<t:EmailAddress>test@davidcr.local</t:EmailAddress>
	</t:Mailbox>
	</ExpandDL>
	</soap:Body>
	</soap:Envelope>

view raw

wrongsoap.xml

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

What I ended up doing was to use the EwsEditor tool and Fiddler (per the guidance of an awesome Exchange guru I work with – thanks Dan!), and I captured the proper soap coming from the Managed API. To get ExpandDL to work properly, you need this SOAP:

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
	<soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages" xmlns:t="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
	<soap:Header>
	<t:RequestServerVersion Version="Exchange2013_SP1" />
	</soap:Header>
	<soap:Body>
	<m:ExpandDL>
	<m:Mailbox>
	<t:EmailAddress>test</t:EmailAddress>
	</m:Mailbox>
	</m:ExpandDL>
	</soap:Body>
	</soap:Envelope>