MIIS Deployment for Exchange 5.5

Configure Connector Filter

The connector filter is used to specify things we do not want to replicate. In our environment, we have chosen not to replicate anything that does not have an Internet Address. We could also choose not to replicate hidden objects or objects with certain key words in the Custom Attribute field or similar. The object types you see listed in this window are specific to Exchange 5.5.

groupOfNames –distribution list

organizationalPerson -mailbox

Remote-Address –custom recipient

These are the only objects you really need to focus on when building filters in this Exchange management agent.

Configure Join and Projection Rules

This is where things can get a little confusing with MIIS. It is important that each person in your organization only exist in the directories once. This sounds pretty basic, but if there are more than one of you, then mail flow could break. The problem is that in many cases, a company has a contact or custom recipient in one system that “points” to a mailbox in another system.  Because of that, you may be in two directories at once. Now, if we should try to combine those directories, we need to make sure there is some logic that does not allow duplicate entries to be created.

Join Rules

The purpose of a join rules is to try to match objects before creating them. For example, let us assume that someone in one directory has created n custom contact or recipient for someone in another directory. By default, both would be copied to the metaverse.

This part in of itself does not create a problem. It is when that objects are written back that we have issues as duplicate items will be written which will certainly cause a disruption in mail flow within that system.

To prevent this from happening, we use join rules to “connect” duplicates in the metaverse.

You can create very specific join rules to follow your business logic For example, you may have items in an HR system that should take precedent over other source systems in which case you could join based on a specific field type or format.

In this example, we are joining objects if the mail attribute is matched. In other words, if an object using the mail attribute: mkirves@businessa.com is in the metaverse, another object using the same mail attribute will “join” the existing one. This prevents the mail address from being used more than once in the environment. In fact, we are using two rules for each object type:

• Join if mail attribute is matched
  • If a contact, group or user is imported into the metaverse with a specific mail attribute, no other other object may overwrite it. This means that user objects may “join” existing contact objects if the custom recipient already exists for that user. The drawback to this example would be that the entry could have incomplete directory information and that the real mailbox would not be authorative for the object.
• Project is mail attribute is not matched
  • If the RFC822mailbox field is populated and the there is no match for the mail attribute, then the object will be automatically projected into the Metaverse

Configuring the basic join rules I have described is a fairly easy task and should take no longer than a few short minutes to apply. Open the Configure Join and Projection Rules selection from the Exchange 55 GAL MA agent.

You will need to add two rules to each of the object types you wish to synchronize. For this example, we will add the following:

groupOfNames

• Declared Projection Rule based on the Metaverse_Contact object type.
• Direct Join rule based on the mail field between the “mail” data source attribute and the “mail” attribute on “Metaverse_Contact.

organizationalPerson

• Declared Projection Rule based on the Metaverse_Contact object type.
• Direct Join rule based on the mail field between the “mail” data source attribute and the “mail” attribute on “Metaverse_Contact.

Remote-Address

• Declared Projection Rule based on the Metaverse_Contact object type.
• Direct Join rule based on the mail field between the “mail” data source attribute and the “mail” attribute on “Metaverse_Contact.

You should notice that the projection rules follow the join rules. You can create multiple join rules for each object type and you can specify custom rules to handle joins. For our purposes, the standard mail mapping fields will suffice.

MIIS Deployment for Exchange 5.5