Could I bother you for a link to your blog? Searching on 'al mulnick blog
mailnickname' (and various combinations thereof) got me all kinds of stuff,
none of which seemed to be what you're referring to.
C'mon, Al, you gotta get over this shyness...
----- Original Message -----
From: Al Mulnick
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 8:41 AM
Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] mailNickName(OT)
Other than being used for access by other protocols such as pop, imap, and
owa, last I checked it's also the value used for the x.400 like address which
is used for mail delivery internally by Exchange. You wouldn't want that to be
non-unique else you might have to call somebody like joe to come in and help
clean up :)
I'm surprised that this company you're at has not gone to unique values for
this. I'm equally surprised they don't have other issues with their Exchange
deployment, but it's possible you haven't gotten far enough into it yet to
notice some of them.
I've blogged about my thoughts regarding what should be globally unique in an
AD/Exchange environment. It's a long enough blog it may even be a good
candidate for an essay or possibly a sleep aid.
If you want the details, have a read. The short answer is that you want
every user to be unique and to have a consistent and trouble-free experience.
That keeps you from being up late at night with international customers first
and your local in-country customers the next day. Mailnickname is one of the
attributes that should be unique same as samaccountname and smtp address (some
are enforced per forest, some per domain but all should be enforced regardless
in my opinion). Since they can often feed on one another, I maintan that
samaccountname should be the user's foundational, non-changing, never touched
as long as that person is a member of the company in good standing, network id.
Exchange relies on Active Directory and as such you're better following the
same rules .
Al
On 11/22/06, joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The mailnickname isn't populated in a similar way to display name. The
common ways for mailnickname generation and its population are through the
RUS, by CDOEXM, or by the special ADUC extension (and no ADUC doesn't use
CDOEXM). This is unlike displayname which has ADUC as its common way to be
populated. Certainly they could have done something like that but they
didn't.
Changing the format is ok, most companies don't do it but some do. But if
there is going to be a change, change to something that is guaranteed to be
unique in your organization. Display names are very often not unique;
definitely not unique at scale which is why Al said, it don't scale.... Go
to any larger company in the US and type in Smith, Jones, Brown, or Johnson
in the GAL and you will likely see multiple Alan's, Andrew's, Amy's, Bob's,
Carol's, Fred's, John's, Steve's, etc... If you are multi-national try
Chang, Chen, Gupta, Singh, Lopez, Hernandez, Jannsen, Smit, Larsen, Berg,
Schulz, or Schmidt.
The attribute is used quite a bit in Exchange. Where all it is used I will
let some Exchange person respond if they want, but look quickly at a
mailbox
enabled user and check how many times you see the value. Note that none of
the other attributes that use mailNickname in their initial generation will
change if you change mailnickname, you absolutely wouldn't want that or
else
it would break certain types of delivery for that user. I have seen some
nasty issues in larger orgs that resulted in mailNicknames not being unique.
The problems can be solved by mechanisms other than unique mailNicknames
but
unique mailNicknames is by far the easiest way to handle it. I have a tool
that reports bad Exchange attribute settings in an Org and duplicate
mailNickname is one of them that I flag as fairly high priority due to my
experiences.
joe
--
O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition -
http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Kern
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 10:07 PM
To: ActiveDir@mail.activedir.org
Subject: Re: [ActiveDir] mailNickName(OT)
well, the company i currently work for sets the mailNickName of all
users to " firstname.lastname".
I didnt know there was any issue with changing the format of that attribute.
we have around 110,000 users mixed between Exchange and Lotus Domino
and this is the format they have been using(why, i'm not sure, I just
started here)
I thought there could be a way to change the default format of the
mailNickName attribute the same way you could change the format of the
displayname.
What issues can arise by changing the mailNickname format.
I mean, what is this attibute for used exactly?
I thought this was only used for POP3 and IMAP and maybe OWA and ADC.
And I didnt think changing it could affect anything.
Can you guys educate me, please?
Thanks
On 11/21/06, joe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Not that I am aware of.
>
> I am with Al on this, keep it as the sAMAccountName. This value while
isn't
> enforced to be unique really should be. Using sAMAccountName helps with
that
> though it still allows duplicates in different domains.
>
> joe
>
> --
> O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition -
> http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Kern
> Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2006 5:19 AM
> To: activedirectory
> Subject: [ActiveDir] mailNickName(OT)
>
> Is there anyway to change the format of the mailNickName attibute to
> be something other than sAMAccountName automatically?
> Is there something like a "display specifiers" change that could
> change the format during the automatic generation of it to be
> "firstname.lastname" or can this only be scripted?
>
> Thanks
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