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Outlook Contact Service - Plausibility?

malcolmtkelly
Level 1
Level 1

I've been thinking of creating a service that could be used to search the users personal contacts on their Outlook/Exchange address book. However, I'm not sure how plausible this idea is.

Does anybody know if it would possible to retrieve this address book from exchange server?

6 Replies 6

rene.stanger
Level 1
Level 1

The exchange server 2007 has a web service interface where you can get the contact information. For more information see:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb204119(EXCHG.80).aspx

We have developed a C#/ASP.NET application, which can search contact information over the cisco ip phone. The application is in testing phase. It will be published in few weeks on our open source portal www.myvoipsource.org.

I've written a custom phonebook which includes a search over various AD paths and the user's contact on an Exchange 2003 server (the latter part using WebDAV) - and another one which is a caller lookup (inbound and outbound) which searches both Exchange 2003 (also via WebDAV) and the Internet (via regular HTTP get and parsing the result).

@Rene: Have you guys considered delivering self-contained applications which do not require tinkering with certificates and install trusted libs and the likes for the future? The current installation of most myvoipsource feels awkward and is rather prone to errors.

Hi Stephan,

regarding myvoipsource installations, at which point did you have to manage certificates or install libraries? If by awkward you mean that there's no install package to click next,next,next and everything is done, right; developers will appreciate to know what of the system the tool is using.

cheers,

alej

Well, let me tell you how I install my own apps:

If it's a web app, I deliver a single war file which can be deployed via tomcat's administrator tool. You don't even need to be physically connected to the machine.. http access to the server will do.

For things that run as services, I configure my app to run inside the java service wrapper.. basically unpacking the zip file, change the wrapper config file so it finds the java runtime, double click on a bat file, and you're set to go. Uninstall is the same.. double click on a bat file, delete the files.

I don't think you necessarily need an installer - you often end up spending way too much time for very little benefit unless you're facing a large number of computer unsavy users - but importing certificates, trusted java libs, and non self contained apps make deployment harder (that's coming from my colleagues without programming experience that have tried to install some of the software).

And while you might end up eating up more space, if you compile the apps that they include all the packages needed (as in jar files), it also makes deployment a lot easier. Netbeans give you this scott free - in the dist directory you have your jar file containing the main application, plus a lib directory containing all the libraries. It's all self contained, you don't have to worry about classpaths and other issues and if the app can start without parameters, you could even launch the app right there double clicking on the jar file (which can be a very good or very bad thing depending on the application).

It's been a while for me but I recall having to deal with trusted libs myself for your call tracking software, and having to deal with the self-signed https certificates for apps that use axl for ccms that require https for axl.

Sounds good!

Unfourtunately the 'trustlib' folder restriction we have is due to using the IIS and calling java classes (our framework) from ASP files. At the beginning this type of script was our customer desire. We are slowly getting rid of such files to avoid IIS/java limitations.

Regarding certificates, I can't reckon deal with self-signed certifications...

I've never worked with ASP but I can configure both ASP.NET (C#) and Java to accept self signed certificates without asking. Since those apps are supposed to run in a trusted network zone, disabling certificate validation is more convenient and user friendly than having to import those certificates (they're just as untrusted either way).

And since starting with CCM5 you can no longer co-host the apps on CCM, the webserver choice should be a choice (so I chose Tomcat.. then there's no trustlib issues because everything is Java).

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