Address Book Server

Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 will reach end of support on January 9, 2018. To stay supported, you will need to upgrade. For more information, see Resources to help you upgrade your Office 2007 servers and clients.

The primary function of the Address Book Server is to provide global address list information from Active Directory Domain Services to Office Communications Server 2007. If the Communicator client accessed Active Directory Domain Services directly, it could affect network performance. To make address book updates faster and more efficient, the Address Book Server acts as an intermediary to provide the updated local copy of the address list to the Communicator client.

The secondary and optional function of the Address Book Server is to perform phone number normalization for Communicator telephony integration. Phone numbers stored in Active Directory user and contact objects are normalized so they can be easily used by the Communicator client and by telephony systems. Although it is preferable for numbers to be normalized in Active Directory, the Address Book Server can also normalize phone numbers.

Among its daily tasks, the Address Book Server generates a set of compressed full files and delta files. These files are stored in a standard NTFS folder. The advantage of the full file and delta file generation is that it minimizes the impact of the client download. When a Communicator client logs on to its Enterprise pool or Standard Edition Server, it receives a URL to the NTFS folder. By using this URL, the client retrieves a full file the first day it connects to the server and delta files on subsequent days.

For detailed information about administering the Address Book Server, see the "Administering Address Book Server" section of the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 Administration Guide.