Cisco Jabber - Unable to search for contacts v11.8.2

[m4d]

Hi guys,

We're randomly having issues with searching for people.

advised from cisco support, to fix the problem was to delete the following folders and do a reboot.

%userprofile%\appdata\Local\Cisco\Unified Communications\Jabber\CSF\History

%userprofile%\appdata\Local\Cisco\Unified Communications\Jabber\CSF\Logs

%appdata%\Cisco\Unified Communications\Jabber\CSF\

this method works almost every time, if it doesn't probably another reboot.

the problem occurs quite frequently, what should i look out for to solve it permanently?

upgrading to v11.9 causes issues like unable to sign-in.

Cheers

Mad

[Mohammed al Baqari]

Can you generate troubleshooting report from jabber and share when the
problem takes place.

[Dennis Mink]

Is this searching for people that a certain user called/IM-ed previously?

or is this a user searching a person that he/she never contacted before

[Mark Swanson]

Honestly, it would be extremely helpful if you provided the jabber-config.xml file for review. Are you using Service Profiles as well? What about DNS SRV?

This problem could be caused by misconfigurations, such as;

- UDS Parameters

- CDI Parameters

- Directory Parameters

- Directory Server Configurations

- Attribute Mappings

Also, verify the 'SearchTimeout' value within the jabber-config.xml file or Service Profiles. The default value is 5 but if you, for example, changed this value to 1... then you're likely going to notice a high rate of unresolved contacts. Check the LDAP servers. Perhaps one, or more Directory servers might be experiencing problems.

As previously mentioned, you can "Report a Problem" via Jabber. This compiles all of the configs, logs, etc. into a zip file. If you want, you can post the log files as well. Good luck.

[m4d]

Hi Everyone,

Unable to search for people that were never contacted before.

Previously IM-ed is searchable.

unable to find jabber-config.xml in the cucm tftp section.

im not sure if im understanding this correctly

we are using a some sort of a hybrid, cucm with webexconnect

and what kind of mis-configuration should I be looking out for?

[Mark Swanson]

Ok, let me go back to the beginning... you said;

Advised from cisco support, to fix the problem was to delete the following folders and do a reboot.

%userprofile%\appdata\Local\Cisco\Unified Communications\Jabber\CSF\History

%userprofile%\appdata\Local\Cisco\Unified Communications\Jabber\CSF\Logs

%appdata%\Cisco\Unified Communications\Jabber\CSF\

Why? Well, these folders contain config (xml) files. They determine what features are enabled vs disabled, along with the basic layout of Cisco Jabber. What they didn't mention was... if you look at the first two folder paths they provided, step back to the CSF folder. There should be 9 or 10 folders including History and Logs. There should be another folder called Contacts. Inside this folder, you should have a file called DirectoryRSCache. This file contains all of your saved contacts as well as your temp contacts. Temp contacts can be someone you searched for but didn't add, or a bunch of users within a distro, or meeting invite. This file is designed to help reduce the load on Active Directory, so you don't have to rebuild this file every time you login. If previously searched contacts are resolvable, then most likely, they already reside in this file and AD isn't providing the query results.

When you launch and login to Cisco Jabber... 

I believe, the following configuration files / profiles will be referenced in this order;

jabber-bootstrap

Service Profiles

jabber-config.xml

jabber-config-defaults.xml

For example: If you configure a parameter with the same (or different) value... whichever file / profile has the highest precedence will be applied. The properties under the jabber-bootstrap have precedence over the Service Profiles and configuration files.

It doesn't sound like you messed around with the bootstrap file, so most likely we can eliminate this file as a potential problem. Did you configured Service Profiles on CUCM? And, what type of Directory Connection do you have; EDI, CDI or UDS? This determines how Jabber queries contacts.

If you don't have a jabber-config.xml file, no biggie, then Jabber applies the default settings via jabber-config-defaults.xml. Of course, this file doesn't contain Directory Connection settings. Most likely, CUCM Service Profiles are providing this service to users. However, you mentioned something about a hybrid deployment of WebEx and Jabber so WebEx could be providing this service, I guess, since WebEx is not disabled (excluded) by default.

Look around and let me know what you find.

[Mark Swanson]

Any updates?

[m4d]

im stilling looking into it.

probably contact a few vendors for clues.

get back soon.

[m4d]

Unable to find any Service Profiles for Cisco Jabber in CUCM.

unable to determine the directory connectivity type

WebExRSCache

found this in Contact, and contains human names, probably search and stored in cache and file named differently.

presence address links to domain webexconnect.com

[Mark Swanson]

Do you have WebEx deployed or enabled?

Cisco Jabber relies on DNS. When you launch Cisco Jabber, it reaches out to DNS for service discovery. If you're not familiar with this concept, please take a look at this link.

The recommended method is User Data Services (UDS) but there's other methods as well; for example:

Basic Directory Integration (BDI)

Enhance Directory Integration (EDI)

and now there is...

Cisco Directory Integration (CDI)

* For more information about directory integration, review the 'Contact Source' chapter via the same link above.

Check DNS and determine which SRV is being advertised via nslookup command. If needed, you can prevent Jabber from discovering WebEx or whatever via ServiceDiscoveryExcludeServices parameter within the jabber-config file. The jabber-config.xml file should be located on your CUCM (TFTP) server(s). You can alter the default settings for Cisco Jabber, meaning, you can enabled/disabled features or declare values.

[mtkelly01]

This was a great explanation and ultimately solved my similar issue.

After remembering that i cleaned up Service Profiles recently, i had the wrong search base in the Directory Profile. Once i corrected that and did a LDAP sync, contact resolution and lookup from Jabber are now working.

Thanks again!