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Has anyone got some experience in working with Active Directory??? I have been looking a solution to this problem..

I have created a custom field in Active Directory Schema (Officer ID). Now on the basis of this field I want to search user while creating a new mail message. Using Exchange System Manatger->Recepients->English->Search Dialog, I have managed to add a label "Officer ID" but when I add an Edit box I don’t find "Officer ID" field in that field mapping list. Why I don’t see that field there?? As I have declared/added officer id field in AD Schema....

Look for "ADSI Edit"...Its more generic AD client...

Why its not showing in Exchange System Manager; this could be that ESM is developed this way; it only shows certain field required for its functionality; it doesnt query/show other fields in the system.

ADSI Edit is kindf complecated thing... it got lot of attributes that are difficult to understand. but i have checked values of both the fields in ADSI Edit, one that is visiable in ESM and the one that is not.. I have also compared the attributes of both the fields. i dont see any difference...

Anyways, i have used "ms-Exch-Extension-Attribute-1" for my custom values.. there are "ms-Exch-Extension-Attribute-1" to "ms-Exch-Extension-Attribute-15" attributes available in the schema, added by exchange server... using ADSI Edit i have changed the display name of these attributes. Everything works fine.. i am able to search contact on the basis of these attributes.... but i still wonder if we can add new attributes in AD Schema why cant we use these attributes in Exchange Server.

Now the next step, in Active Directory Users and Computers-->Find window these attributes are available as "Custom Attribute 1 to 15" . lets say my first field "ms-Exch-Extension-Attribute-1" is Officer ID, and if i search this Officer ID=2020 in exchange address book i find the right person. Now in AD when i use the find option, i dont see "ms-Exch-Extension-Attribute-1" or "Officer ID" but i see "Custom Attribute 1". ab i wana change that "Custom Attribute 1" label to "Officer ID"... man i dont find that "Custom Attribute 1" label anywhere in the world :)...

any suggestions </smile>

Think of Active Directory (or any Directory Services in general) as a raw datastore; a database or a file system. Active Directory has certain attributes out of the box, as its being used by certain Windows services like authentication, DNS and so forth, and at the same time; one can specify custom attributes and can use it as a directory server for his own use.

Now that AD will have certain attributes/data-types being used by Windows itself; its natural that the tools shipped will only support those attributes that they require. If you want AD as a directory store; its natural that you might need to build your own tools. AD has different hooks like LDAP and ADSI, that one can use for this purpose.

ADSI Edit and other similar tools are there to manage AD as a directory service; therefore they are more complex.

I hope it helped...