Planning directory services for Notes® clients

Contacts

Contacts is a directory on the Notes® client that stores contacts created by users -- documents containing information about people with whom the users come in contact and/or send mail -- and that stores mailing lists created by users for sending mail to groups of people. Contacts also stores a variety of documents related to configuration of the Notes® client.

For more information, see the HCL Notes® Help.

Condensed directory catalog

A condensed directory catalog is an optional directory on a Notes® client that aggregates user and group entries from one or more Domino® directories. A condensed directory catalog provides Notes® users with a small, local, organization-wide directory that they can use either offline or when connected to the local area network.

Type-ahead addressing

Using type-ahead addressing, a Notes® user enters a few letters in a mail addressing field and Notes® tries to match those letters to a name in a directory. If Notes® finds a match, it enters the completed name in the addressing field automatically. If a Notes® user has a condensed directory catalog, type-ahead addressing does not search a directory on a server. However, pressing F9 to resolve a name will search for the name in both local and server directories.

Administrators can use a setting in a Configuration Settings document to disable type-ahead addressing on a server to reduce network traffic and improve server performance.

Easy location of user and group entries

Notes® users can use an addressing tool or a generic search tool to find easily user and group entries in a directory. When searching Contacts or a Domino® Directory, these tools provide a type-ahead-style mechanism to match letters entered by a user to a name in a directory. Users can choose to view entries in a directory by name, by Notes® name hierarchy, by corporate hierarchy, and by alternate names (if used).

To search all local Contacts or an LDAP directory accessed using an LDAP Account document, users can use an LDAP-style search query to locate entries. For example, users can search for all entries with the last name "Brown."

For additional information, see HCL Notes® Help.

Access to server directories

The Notes® client has automatic access to the Domino® Directory in its domain. If an administrator sets up directory assistance for a secondary directory, or sets up a server-based directory catalog, Notes® clients can easily address mail to users and groups in those directories.

In addition, a Notes® client can be set up with LDAP accounts to connect directly to a remote LDAP directory.

Directory servers

Using the Domino directory server field on the Servers tab of a Location document in Contacts, Notes® clients can use directory servers, rather than mail servers, for directory lookups.