Alias exchange with dot or underscore

[j.bilodeau]

Unity 4.0.3. Why can I have an alias with a dot or underscore when I'm importing users either from the Unity importtool or AD, but manually, I cannot. Does the dot and underscore may cause problem? Thank you.

[mkale]

The dot and underscore characters are not valid DNS names, so that is likely why the SA is not allowing them. (They wouldn't be allowed in a computer name, or a domain name.) However, for user and DL names, they are allowed as you can see. It's likely that the SA is being a little overzealous on what it filters. See this page for details about valid AD characters:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/adsi/adsi/ldap_adspath.asp

It includes a list of special characters that require special handling at the bottom, and neither the dot nor the underscore is listed. You'll be fine with these users after importing them.

Let me know if you have any questions,

Michael Kale, mkale@cisco.com

[j.house]

I actually have a client that is having the same problem. I imported their users into Unity and the import took the alias with a ".", but for day to day admin my client can't add a new Unity subscriber from the SA because it won't allow the "." in the alias. The workaround is to create the exchange account first and then import the user into Unity.....this is very inefficient.

Does Unity 4.0.4 correct this limitation?

[andy-smith]

Has anybody found a resolution to this problem?

This is causing me a big headache. I currently have a Voicemail only system and will be moving to Unified very soon. But in the mean time I would like to use an alias with a dot in (ie. Joe.Bloggs) as that is what the users is using as their E-mail alias.

This is causing me big problems as I will not be able to use the tools to import the users when I go to Unified messaging as the Voicemail alias will be different to the E-mail alias.

Anybody think of a workaround?

[lindborg]

The SA and CUBI have supported periods in the alias for a while now - just tested the 4.1(1) build at my desk and it works fine. What version of Unity are you running on?

and for going from VM to UM you can consider using DiRT with it's automatic Alias mapping function for just this type of alias transition issue. You can find out more about it on its home page here:

http://www.ciscounitytools.com/App_DisasterRecoveryTools.htm

[andy-smith]

Jeff,

I am currently using 4.0(4), what version was this first supported in?