Can Domino 6.5x read remote Exchange Address Book?

[Sprowler]

Hello everyone!

Hope you can help with my question. Here it is....

My company is just about to upgrade from Domino/Notes 4.6 to V6.51. However, we are about to join another Group of companies who use Exchange, and they want us to be able to see their Exchange Address Book, and vice versa. The logical step would seem to be for us to move to Exchange (they are much bigger than us), but I am a very big Domino fan, particularly after seeing how much better V6.51 is to V4.6. Also, we know nothing about admin to Exchange, so it will be a big change for us.

I have been asked to find out if it is possible for Exchange and Domino to read each other's Address Books, and also to be able to share calendars across both products.

I'd be very grateful if anyone can help me, and there are many stars on offer! Look forward to hearing from you.

I have posted this question on the Exchange forum too.

 

[Packet7]

Hello,

What you can do is export the Exchange AB in LDIF format into a Secondary Domino Directory. This Directory is called an Extended Directory Catalog and uses a single hidden view ($PeopleGroupsFlat) to reduce size.

The Directory Catalog should be replicated out to all your Domino Servers, so users can use your Domino Company NAB and the Directory Catalog for mail addressing. Remote users can benefit from a client version (local replica).

Not too familiar with R6.5 yet, but I know they made some advancements with the Notes connector for exchange. I would research this for the Exchange side of things. The connector should allow the Outlook clients to utilize Domino resources.

I am by far far no wiz at setting this up, but I do have documentation (Domino not Exchange). Let me know if you have any questions and I hope this was helpful to you.

Rgds,

John

 

[Sprowler]

Hi Packet7! Sorry for the delay in replying, but have been very busy.

Thanks for replying. We have discovered that Domino can import "vCard" formatted data, so we have asked the other site if they can export their Address Book in this format. Domino seems to import this no problem, so it looks like it could be the answer. If not we'll try your suggestion.

Many thanks, and enjoy your weekend.

 

[TSNYC]

Hi Sprowler. Did you try the "vCard" solution?

In my experience, the vCard is a single user solution and could require your Exchange environment to create a vCard for each entry. I'm trying to do something similar and just wondered how you came out.

 

[Sprowler]

Hi TSNYC.

We managed to import their entire Exchange Address Book into Notes from one vCard, and it worked fine, but it isn't dynamic, so any changes have to be imported again.

I don't actually work there anymore, so if you'd like to know more, I can ask them on your behalf, although I think they are going to (unwisely) move over to Exchange.

Let me know if you want me to do that for you.

Kind regards.

 

[TSNYC]

Sprowler, thanks for your reply. The information that you provided is enough for me. I'll ask my Exchange admin to do this and we'll try it out.

Normally, I would recommend implementing an Exchange connector during a migration/coexistence period. Unfortunately, there are not adequate support personnel to do this. So the vCard sounds like the best alternate for populating a secondary Domino directory.

Thanks very much.

 

[Sprowler]

Hi TSNYC

Glad to be of help to you.

You may want to look on the Lotus support pages too. From memory, I think that's where we struck on the idea. However, it appears only V6 onwards supports vCards.

I found this on the Lotus Support site doing a search for Exchange and vCard:-

http://www-.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21102862

Hope it's of help to you, and good luck with your project.