Search object type contact from MS AD

[pfalgowski]

Hello

I would like to know how to configure Jabber for Windows to be able to find from AD contacts.

By contact I don't mean contact in term of Jabber, but contact in term of AD.

In jabber by default is used (&(objectCategory=person) Base Filter - documentation

When I'm using such query on my AD I can see contacts and user accounts. Sadly in Jabber after searching contact name no search result pop up.

Am I doing someting wrong?

Regards,

Peter

[Muhammad Maqsood Mushtaq]

Hi Peter,

Is this a domain computer or standalone workstation? Did you configure a jabber-config.xml file (examples in admin guide.)?

Thanks,

Maqsood

[pfalgowski]

Hi Maqsood,

Computer is member of the domain, so yes it is a domain computer.

What do you mean by, did you configure a jabber-config.xml? As I said earlier it is default value and configuration isn't necessery to accomplish that.

But yes I've tried to put below configuration without results. SearchBase1 worked fine, but BaseFilter didn't help in searching contacts from AD.

      EDI
      (&(objectCategory=person)

      OU=Base, DC=company,DC=com

I've tried BaseFilter with one bracket at the end and also with two - same result.

When I've changed objectCategory to something else than person, the result was as you would expect - the lack of any results - so BaseFilter is parsed by Jabber correctly.

Regards,

Peter

[Muhammad Maqsood Mushtaq · Accepted solution]

Hi Peter,

I think I misunderstood your question earlier, appologies for the confusion. AD contact search is not supported by Jabber. An enhancement request is open to support this.

CSCuc11684 :  Search and add AD contacts to contact list.

Thanks,

Maqsood

[pfalgowski]

Hi Maqsood,

Thank you for quick replay.

Could you estimate timespan required to fulfill that enhancement request?

Regards,

Peter

[Muhammad Maqsood Mushtaq]

Hi Peter,

It is not possible for me to suggest any timespan for this feature. Please track the progress of this feature request via Cisco Bug Toolkit.

Thanks,

Maqsood

[LondoMollari82204]

While it may not be officially supported, it is possible to search for "contact" objects in AD.

First, your LDAP base filter configured in jabber-config must be an LDAP filter which includes contact objects.
The filter (&(objectCategory=person)  should work (though you might want to refine it).

But this alone will not be enough.
Jabber will not display the contact if it cannot resolve its chat address. And by default, Jabber will resolve the chat address for a user returned from an AD query like this: sAMAccountname@defaultdomain.com where defaultdomain.com is the default domain defined on your IM&P server.
The problem is, a user in active directory has a sAMAccountname attribute; but a contact object in AD does not have the sAMAccountname attribute. So Jabber cannot resolve the chat address; so jabber will not display this contact.

To get around this:
1) add an attribute in AD for "ChatAddress". You can add the new attribute to your AD schema; or you can just use an existing unused attribute in your AD schema. For example, you could use the "pager" attribute if you wanted to contain the chat address. But if possible, I would recommend that you use either the "mail" attribute or the "msRTCSIP-PrimaryUserAddress" attribute, since these are the only ones that can also be imported into CUCM. 
2) In AD, make sure that all of your existing users, and all of your contacts have this attribute populated with the chat address. That is, the attribute you are going to use for chat address must contain the chat address:
- for your users this would be something like username@yourdomain.com
- for external contacts this would be something like username@contactsdomain.com

3) Finally, add this to your jabber-config.xml file:
<UseSipUriToResolveContacts>true</UseSipUriToResolveContacts>
<SipUri>pager</SipUri>
that last parameter tells jabber to use the AD attribute named "pager" to resolve chat addresses. If you selected a different attribute, replace "pager" with the name of the attribute you decided to use.

Hope this helps.