How to add additional GroupWise fields into Exchange address book.

  • 7002872
  • 31-Mar-2009
  • 26-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell GroupWise 7
Novell GroupWise 8
Novell GroupWise Gateway - 7.x Gateway for MS Exchange
Microsoft Exchange server 2003

Situation

In GroupWise address book you can have additional attributes added to a user account like city, address, country ... You would like to get those extra fields also synchronised via the gateway into Active Directory (AD) / Exchange system address book (GAL).

Resolution

Extra attributes for a user can be added in GroupWise via Admin Defined fields. Here is an example of adding, for instance attribute City to any GroupWise account:
  • Start ConsoleOne and connect to any GroupWise domain database.
  • Go into Tools  | GroupWise System Operations | Admin-Defined Fields.
  • You get a list of admin defined fields that can be empty or already in used - there are assigned eDir attributes. Let us say Admin Defined 5 is not yet used. Highlight the line and click Edit.
  • From a list of existing User Properties within eDir, select city, then confirm assignment. This extra attribute option is since this time available for any GroupWise user.
  • Edit properties of any existing GroupWise user and then click on Other tab.
  • Click on Add and from available list find and select city. In new field type any city name, Rotterdam, for instance.
  • To make this new attribute / field visible in a GroupWise system address book, you will need to enable it at the domain level. Check properties of a domain, GroupWise | Address Book tab. You will see *city item in an available field that you can add to address book fields. 
  • GroupWise end user must then add this extra field / column to his system address book view.
Now comes a part of the gateway configuration:
  • Locate and open the gateway startup configuration file, gwexch.cfg.
  • Scroll down to the OPTIONAL ATTRIBUTE VALUES section.
  • Enable item City and assign it number 5. Note, the number here must match the number of Admin Defined field in ConsoleOne that you used to assign "city" attribute. Save and close the config file.
  • Now you can start the gateway and eventually also force a directory sync to populate new attribute in the AD site.
  • Open Outlook client and log into any Exchange mailbox and view properties of the GroupWise user from the system GAL. You will find the city field populated. Similarly when you open AD Users & Computers tool and do check properties of GroupWise contact, you get the city attribute populated, too.