Configuring Address Book Server Phone Normalization

Topic Last Modified: 2009-03-04

Phone numbers that are stored in disparate directories are essentially unstructured strings that lack a strict model for consistency. Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2 requires standardized E.164 phone numbers. This number translation is performed by the Address Book Server in conjunction with mapping rules. Two types of rules can be applied to phone numbers:

• Generic rules.
  Generic rules are not editable. They are a resource inside the ABServer.exe file.
• Company rules.
  Company rules are rules that you configure specifically to meet your company requirements. A sample company rule is in a text file that is included in the installation folder with ABServer.exe, which is a command-line tool that you can use to manage Address Book Server. The name of the sample file is Sample_Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt. The file includes instructions to copy the sample file to the output location for the pool and change the name to Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt. Following these instructions ensures that the file can be used for future synchronization passes and that the rule is implemented as a company rule.

If you do not copy and rename the sample file to Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt, Address Book Server uses only the built-in generic rules. Company rules override the generic rules. Normalization rules are parsed in order. If a phone number applies the wrong rule, that is because the phone number matched a rule listed earlier in the normalization rules text file.

You can validate your normalization rules text file by using the Address Book Server ABServer.exe command with the –testPhoneNorm switch. For details, see Managing the Address Book Server from the Command Line.