Adding a mailbox from another address book...

Question

Situation: a Exchange server 2016 with the latest CU / Outlook client 2016 (also latest updates).
On our Exchange server (1 piece) there are many databases (57). Per company there is also a gal, oab, addresslist,....

CompanyA has a E-mail Address Policy (EAP) and it determines if a user mailbox has an attribute and if the value in that attribute is the value added to the EAP it gets an address book of the company.

So to be more clear:
CompanyA: if attribute1 has a value = compA than it gets AddressBookA
CompanyB: if attribute1 has a value = compB than it gets AddressBookB
...
That is all ok. There must be a line between those 2 companies.

But now I have to add some mailboxes of companyB to users of companyA.
So I go to Outlook and in the Outlook profile (user of companyA) I add a new service. It connects to the mailbox of companyB with the credentials of account/mailbox of companyB. That went well.
After that I have to close Outlook and reopen it.
After reopening it should give me a popup where I can enter the credentials of the mailbox of companyB.

But instead of that it shows me a popup: it cannot find the mailbox in the address book. And ofcourse that is true because companyA is a member of the address book of companyA, not of companyB.

I have also setup a configuration so that companyA has its own address book, but in Outlook it sees also the address lists of the other companies (here companyB).

If anyone understands my question: is there a solution for this?

Kind regards
Kurt

Answer 1

Hi @IRC Admin ,

By "logged on with a user who...", are you trying to say the primary account of the Outlook profile? And could you please clarify how you added the second mailbox which belongs to compB?

I tried to test in my lab with the configuration below and had no issue if the second mailbox from CompB was added via File > Add account:

Configuration:
User1 is in compA's GAL and AL.
User2 is in the AL of compB but not in compA's GAL.
User1 is now configured as the primary account of the Outlook profile.

However, when I tried to add user2's mailbox from File > Account Settings > More settings > Advanced, the error prompted. Seems this method requires the mailbox to be added is included in the GAL of the primary account.

Answer 2

@Yuki Sun-MSFT

I did it this way:
Open Outlook => File => Account settings => Account settings => new

So I tried it in your way and what do I see..... NO MORE popup. amazing!
And the added mailbox compB is not a member of the GAL of compA. so that is just what I wanted.

Amazing YukiSun. All credit is to you.
Many thanks.

Kurt

Answer 3

Hi @IRC Admin ,

But instead of that it shows me a popup: it cannot find the mailbox in the address book. And ofcourse that is true because companyA is a member of the address book of companyA, not of companyB.

By this, do you mean in order for users in companyA to use the "new service" with mailboxes from companyB, now you would like users in companyA to see these companyB mailboxes(used for the new service) to appear in their address book?

If this describes the situation, how about adding a specific attribute for these companyB mailboxes and create an Address list using this attibute. After that, you can update the existing Address Book Policy for companyA to include this new Address list.
Basically the ABP for this scenario is similar to the table below:
(AL_Bmailboxes is the address list created using the specific attribute for these companyB mailboxes which are used for the new service.)

Let‘s say the address list "AL_Bmailboxes" is created based on "CustomAttribute2 -eq "Bmailboxes"", we can use the following commands to make the change:

New-AddressList -Name "AL_Bmailboxes" -RecipientFilter {(RecipientType -eq 'UserMailbox') -and (CustomAttribute2 -eq "Bmailboxes")}  
Set-AddressBookPolicy -Identity "ABP_A" -AddressLists "AL_A_Users","AL_Bmailboxes"  

For more informaiton about ABP, you may refer to Procedures for address book policies in Exchange Server.

Feel free to let me know if I have misunderstood anything.

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Answer 4

@Yuki Sun-MSFT

the primary mailbox belongs to compA and the second mailbox is from compB, now the problem is that..

==> exactly

The action cannot be completed. The name cannot be matched to a name in the address list."

==> exactly, right

new outlook profile and see if you are able to add the test mailbox from compB only.

==>Strange: I create a new outlook profile when I am logged on with a user who has a mailbox within CompA. Result: for the mailbox of compB==> The action cannot be completed. The name cannot be matched to a name in the address list.
I log on with a user who has a mailbox within compB and the Outlook profile is created without issue.

you may modify the attribute of the test compB mailbox to make it show up in compA's GAL and see how it goes.

==>when I add the custom attribute of compA to the mailbox of compB and then I try to add the mailbox there is no popup anymore.

BUT then the users of compB see that mailbox in their address book. So that user of compA is been showing in the AL of compB.
Thanks for your feedback.