Auto Populate Telephone Numbers form Active Directory to Office Communicator 2007/R2

In some OCS 2007/R2 Implementation scenarios without Enterprise Voice it is required that all user’s Telephone numbers in Active Directory to be populated to Office Communicator 2007/R2 though Office Communication Server 2007/R2 Address Book, so Communicator user can know Telephone Numbers for his contacts with one click on a contact inside Office Communicator without query the Corporate Directory in Outlook or from Corporate Telephone System, below picture show what user will see from one click in communicator when User’s Telephone Numbers Auto Populated from Active Directory to Office Communicator.

This Microsoft article https://support.microsoft.com/kb/961947 shows that if the telephone number stored in Active Directory is not in standard format ………………. Then numbers will not be populated to Office Communicator

Create Company Normalization Rule File

To overcome the non standard telephone numbers issue and allow Auto Population for User’s Telephone Numbers from Active Directory to Office Communication Server 2007/R2 you need to create Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules text file include all customer Normalization Rules related to how customer store Telephone Numbers in Active Directory, to this there is a template file named “Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt” and stored in OCS Front End Server in this path “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2\Web Components\Address Book Files\Files” this template file is like the one in picture below:

Now you need to create a copy of the above file and name it with name start customer name for example Contoso_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt and edit on this file to add specific customer Normalization rules, for example let us assume that there are two formats of telephone numbers stores in user’s properties in Active Directory as the following:

· Internal extensions consist of 4 digits

· Mobile Numbers Start with 01 and followed with 2 or 7 or 8 then followed by 7 digits

Then we will edit the file to be as the following:

Then we need to copy the new Contoso_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt file into to folders:

· Same Folder where is the original file was exists C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2\Web Components\Address Book Files\Files

· OCS Address Book Share Folder, this folder is created while OCS Installation and used to store Address Book, for example this folder can be something like C:\OCSShared\AddressBook

Regenerate Address Book to OCS

Then we need to regenerate the address book using abServer.exe –regenur command

Synchronize Address Book to OCS

Then Force Address Book Synchronization using abServer.exe –syncnow

Sign Off and Sign In to Communicator

Finally Sign off from Communicator and delete the address book files from user computer and sign in again to communicator, then communicator will be ready with telephone numbers populated from Active Directory, to force Sign Off for all Communicator Clients you can restart OCS Front End Services.