How do you guys cope with internal and external phone numbers in the Global Address List?
We have 5000+ staff scattered around the world with a 5-digit internal dialplan, anyone can call anyone globally across the internal network by dialing their 5-digit internal extension number.
So ideally I would like to put each staff member’s 5-digit internal number in the Active Directory field “BusinessPhone” and put the external number in the “BusinessPhone2” field. This is because the Outlook Address Book (OAB) is hard-coded to display the BusinessPhone field only in its search summary, not BusinessPhone2.
But then I have almost as many Blackberries out there using a recent BES. The much vaunted/criticized “Lookup” facility also appears to be hardwired to use the BusinessPhone1 field. My 5-digit numbers are no use to the Blackberry, it wants to see a real red-blooded external number, ideally including country code.
Recent versions of BES do support Contact/Blackberry field mapping – but this is exactly that, mapping of fields between the Outlook Contacts and their Blackberry contacts. It seems to have no effect on the Lookup function.
Does anyone else have such a globally coordinated dialplan? Where have you stored the internal extension numbers and the equivalent external numbers in AD, and how have you ensured that users see the internal numbers through Outlook when they are at their desks but the the external numbers on their Blackberries when they are on the road.
I can’t be the only sysadmin with this dilemma.
Alistair