Chapter 11: Managing Address Lists

Overview

Over the past 20 years, LAN-based and host-based e-mail systems have become more complex and have offered more and more features. One of the features that has become indispensable is an address book of mailboxes to which you might commonly send mail. The address book provides you with a view into the mail system's directory service database. In an Exchange environment, we refer to this address book as the global address list and the directory service is the Active Directory.

In most cases, the global address list is a comprehensive listing of all mail-enabled objects in your Active Directory. However, there are system objects (such as system mailboxes) as well as hidden objects that will not appear in the global address list (GAL), but most user mailboxes, resource mailboxes, mail-enabled users, mail-enabled contacts, and mail-enabled groups will appear in the GAL. If you have mail-enabled public folders that are not hidden, they will also appear in the GAL.

The GAL is seen by Exchange clients through a number of different mechanisms. Probably the least commonly used method is through a direct LDAP query. The most common methods to view information in the Exchange GAL are using either an Outlook MAPI client and using Outlook Web Access. For many organizations, the GAL is used not only for addressing e-mail but for looking up information about other users in the organization, such as address, title, and telephone numbers. Figure 11.1 shows an example of the Outlook 2007 address book when viewing the GAL.

Figure 11.1: Viewing the global address list

Note that the GAL shown in Figure 11.1 is probably not very useful for the organization's company white pages or company directory. There is not much additional information on the mailboxes and contacts; even the title and business phone number are missing for most mail-enabled objects.

For mobile users or users that work offline, you can build a subset of the information that is found in the main GAL that can be more easily downloaded and viewed offline. These are called offline address books.

In many small and medium-sized businesses, the default listing of the GAL, the default address lists, and the default offline address book will prove to be sufficient. However, other organizations may find a need to customize these.

Note 

Any changes you make, such adding a new address list or creating new global address lists, will not appear until the user closes their mail client and re-opens it. Since these objects are all stored in the Active Directory, waiting for the Active Directory to replicate to all global catalog servers may also slow the availability of new address lists.

Topics in this chapter include the following:

• Defining additional global address lists

• Creating custom address lists

• Customizing offline address books