Mac OS® X Snow Leopard™ Server For Dummies®

Chapter 11. Sharing Contacts with Address Book Server

In This Chapter

• Considering clients for Address Book Server

• Configuring Address Book Server

• Importing contacts from Mac OS X Server 10.5

• Setting up the Address Book client

Address Book Server is a new service that enables users to share contacts in Snow Leopard Server. Address Book Server binds to a network directory, such as Open Directory or Active Directory, and then makes the contacts in the network directory available to Mac OS X 10.6 users through the Address Book application. People can use the Address Book client to search the global address list of the network's directory service. Address Book Server makes contacts available to other Mac applications, including Mail, iCal, and iChat, in Mac OS X 10.6. (See Chapters 5 and 6 for more on directory services.)

That's all nice, but here's the key benefit to Address Book Server: It enables users to modify contacts and add their own contacts to the server. This usually isn't possible (or desired) in Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)-based directories, such as Open Directory. Users can also create their own fields for contacts, such as for Twitter names or company-specific information — an unheard-of thought with an LDAP directory. Because Address Book Server acts as kind of a gateway to the directory server, you don't need to give users write permissions to the network directory, and you don't need to modify the LDAP schema.

Address Book Server stores contacts as standard ...