Users Dissapearing from 3.1(4)

[mperbix]

We have Unity 3.1.4 that is integrated with W2K and Exchange 2000. I have added a few voicemail users the past weeks, and noticed that they are no longer in the unity system. I do not believe that anything has happened as far as the user accounts/email is concerned.

Also I have a few users with set up account, and listed in teh directory, that are NOT being listed when I actually attempt to do a directory listing.

Any ideas on these......

[kechambe]

Can you be more specific on that exactly is missing for these users? Do they have AD/Exchange accounts still? Can you reimport then?

Make sure the users that should be listed in the directory actually have a recorded name.

Keith

[mperbix]

They are still in AD/Exchange, but they vanish from Unity. I believe I can re-import them, but the question is now, who dissapeared....

I will pass on the recorded name info.

[Ginger Dillon]

Hello -

I saw this entry in the forum today and wanted to pass along a problem we encountered and worked with TAC on ...

We were experiencing the same problems as this user's entry - users getting deleted from the UnityDb, but still in AD. Here's what we found - Unity was built in our Exchange organization (single forest, multiple domains) at the root of the forest tree. The Unity server was pointing to a GC in a domain that was NOT ours. As soon as we changed the GC entry in the registry to our own GC, we no longer lost Unity subscribers. Synchronization with the other domain's GC was only occurring every 15 minutes, and if a subscriber's record was not in the GC, it was telling our Unity server the subscriber was not valid. Maybe this information will help another site :-)

[oliviers]

Hmmm. Although the GC being in a different Domain could cause some replication issues and possible weirdness, I doubt it would have anything to do with Unity subscribers missing from the local SQL.

As far as Unity subscribers being removed from the local SQL based on directory information, it would happen as the directory monitors do their sync cycles. When the sync cycles occur, it doesn't really compare what's in the SQL tables to what's in the directory. Instead it asks the GC or DC for which Unity subscribers have been deleted and which Unity subscribers have changed. Based on those removals or changes, the local SQL tables are modified.

If the GC was in a different Domain, and there was a directory sync (not Unity) delay, it wouldn't delete Unity subscribers. If a user was created/imported via Unity, and the GC hadn't yet known about when the Unity GC monitor goes for its sync cycle, the just wouldn't return that particular user as a changed Unity subscriber.

You can run into problems with the described situation; if an Admin changed directory properties (like first name, last name, etc...) on the Unity user in the directory (say, through AD users and computers), it may take a while for those changes to show up in Unity. They will eventually make it there, it just might take a while.

I appreciate the sharing of the issues that you experienced. Users going missing from the local SQL tables is an extremely troubling issue that I'd like to find some causes for. I'm just not so sure it had to do with Unity's configured GC being in a different Domain being the cause.

When you mentioned, "it was telling our Unity server the subscriber was not valid", under what circumstance was that happening? I can see something like that happening, I was just curious where that was happening. Also, what Unity version was the site running?

Once again, I'm not saying that Unity users weren't dropping out of the SQL table; I'm just saying that I don't think it had to do with the Unity GC monitor pointing to a GC in a different Domain.

[Ginger Dillon]

Hello -

Thank you for your in-depth answer. We are running Unity 3.1.5 with CallManager 3.2(2a). Working with TAC accessing our server remotely, we could import a user in Unity from Exchange 2000, have the user enroll as a new subscriber, and then see that user in the UnityDB table Subscribers. Sometimes the timing varied by 10-20 minutes, or sometimes it would happen within a few minutes, the user would not be able to access the system via phone or web. We checked the Subscriber table in UnityDB and the subscriber entry would be gone. This behavior cleared as soon as we pointed our Unity server to our own GC, meaning this was the only change we made at the time. This situation did serve to show us how complex our AD/Exchange organization is, with multiple domains, Exchange 5.5 sites, and Exchange 2K administrative groups (all replicating with each other). I really appreciate your input on this too - helps to continue my learning!!