Skip to main content

Finding Stale Address and Telephone information in the GAL with a script

I came across this while actually looking for something else but it does go some way to answering another question that gets asked occasionally. If you want to use the information in the GAL (eg Active Directory) for phone numbers and address’s ect how up to date is this information eg can I find out the last time it was updated. While maybe not 100% accurate one method that you maybe able to use is to use the Metadata from Active Directory which stores information about when the last time each property was updated and replicated in Active directory.

To access the metadata from a script you need to use the iadstools.dll which comes as part of the Windows 2000/3 Support Tools package which can be found on the server CD in Support\Tools folder. Robbie Allen has put together a number of samples on using the objects in this DLL in his Active Directory cookbook which is worth checking out here. For this script I’ve expanded greatly on one of his samples by including a query of ever mailbox in the GAL and then feeding in the DN of each user to grab the metadata about each property and then using a few case statements to filter that data a little further to just the telephone numbers and a few address property such as Street Address and Office. I then feed the data into a CSV file so you can then open this up in Excel and do extra filtering etc.

This is really just scratching the surface of what you can do with this library is terms of diagnosing replication problems etc.

To run the script you need to have the Windows 2000/3 Support Tools installed so you will have the iadstools.dll registered. The script takes one commandline parameter which is the name of the Domain Controller you want to run it against. Eg

Cscript adrlastupdated.vbs domaincontrollernetbiosName

I’ve put a downloadable copy of the script here there script itself look like

dcDomainController = wscript.arguments(0)
set objIadsTools = CreateObject("IADsTools.DCFunctions")
set conn = createobject("ADODB.Connection")
set com = createobject("ADODB.Command")
Set iAdRootDSE = GetObject("LDAP://RootDSE")
Set fso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
set wfile = fso.opentextfile("c:\temp\AdrinfoLastupdated.csv",2,true)
strNameingContext = iAdRootDSE.Get("defaultNamingContext")
Conn.Provider = "ADsDSOObject"
Conn.Open "ADs Provider"
Query = "<LDAP://" & strNameingContext &amp; ">;(&(&(& (mailnickname=*)(mailnickname=*)(!msExchHideFromAddressLists=TRUE)(|
(&(objectCategory=person)(objectClass=user)(|(homeMDB=*)(msExchHomeServerName=*)))
))));distinguishedName,displayname;subtree"
Com.ActiveConnection = Conn
Com.CommandText = Query
Com.Properties("Page Size") = 1000
Set Rs = Com.Execute
wfile.writeline("Mailbox,TelephoneNumber,Mobile Number,Home Phone,Street
Address,Office")
While Not Rs.EOF
wfile.writeline(rs.fields("displayname").value & "," &
getUserData(dcDomainController,rs.fields("distinguishedName")))
rs.movenext
Wend
wfile.close
set wfile = nothing
set fso = Nothing



function getUserData(dcDomainController,dnUserDN)
dlDataline = ""
tnTelephoneNumber = "Not Set"
mnMobileNumber = "Not Set"
hnHomePhone = "Not Set"
saStreetAddress = "Not Set"
ofOffice = "Not Set"

intRes = objIadsTools.GetMetaData(Cstr(dcDomainController),Cstr(dnUserDN),0)

if intRes = -1 then
Wscript.Echo objIadsTools.LastErrorText
WScript.Quit
end if
wscript.echo "User" & dnUserDN
for count = 1 to intRes
select case objIadsTools.MetaDataName(count)
case "telephoneNumber" wscript.echo "Telephone Number last write: " &
objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
tnTelephoneNumber = objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
case "mobile" wscript.echo "Mobile Number last write: " &
objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
mnMobileNumber = objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
case "homePhone" wscript.echo "Home Phone Number last write: " &
objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
hnHomePhone = objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
case "streetAddress" wscript.echo "Street Address last write: " &
objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
saStreetAddress = objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
case "physicalDeliveryOfficeName" wscript.echo "Office last write: " &
objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
ofOffice = objIadsTools.MetaDataLastWriteTime(count)
end select
next
wscript.echo
dlDataline = tnTelephoneNumber &amp; "," & mnMobileNumber & "," & hnHomePhone & ","
& saStreetAddress &amp; "," & ofOffice
getUserData = dlDataline
end function


Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

The MailboxConcurrency limit and using Batching in the Microsoft Graph API

If your getting an error such as Application is over its MailboxConcurrency limit while using the Microsoft Graph API this post may help you understand why. Background   The Mailbox  concurrency limit when your using the Graph API is 4 as per https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/throttling#outlook-service-limits . This is evaluated for each app ID and mailbox combination so this means you can have different apps running under the same credentials and the poor behavior of one won't cause the other to be throttled. If you compared that to EWS you could have up to 27 concurrent connections but they are shared across all apps on a first come first served basis. Batching Batching in the Graph API is a way of combining multiple requests into a single HTTP request. Batching in the Exchange Mail API's EWS and MAPI has been around for a long time and its common, for email Apps to process large numbers of smaller items for a variety of reasons.  Batching in the Graph is limited to a m
Read more

Sending a Message in Exchange Online via REST from an Arduino MKR1000

This is part 2 of my MKR1000 article, in this previous post  I looked at sending a Message via EWS using Basic Authentication.  In this Post I'll look at using the new Outlook REST API  which requires using OAuth authentication to get an Access Token. The prerequisites for this sketch are the same as in the other post with the addition of the ArduinoJson library  https://github.com/bblanchon/ArduinoJson  which is used to parse the Authentication Results to extract the Access Token. Also the SSL certificates for the login.windows.net  and outlook.office365.com need to be uploaded to the devices using the wifi101 Firmware updater. To use Token Authentication you need to register an Application in Azure https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/office/office365/howto/add-common-consent-manually  with the Mail.Send permission. The application should be a Native Client app that use the Out of Band Callback urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob. You need to authorize it in you tenant (eg build a small ap
Read more

How to test SMTP using Opportunistic TLS with Powershell and grab the public certificate a SMTP server is using

Most email services these day employ Opportunistic TLS when trying to send Messages which means that wherever possible the Messages will be encrypted rather then the plain text legacy of SMTP.  This method was defined in RFC 3207 "SMTP Service Extension for Secure SMTP over Transport Layer Security" and  there's a quite a good explanation of Opportunistic TLS on Wikipedia  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opportunistic_TLS .  This is used for both Server to Server (eg MTA to MTA) and Client to server (Eg a Message client like Outlook which acts as a MSA) the later being generally Authenticated. Basically it allows you to have a normal plain text SMTP conversation that is then upgraded to TLS using the STARTTLS verb. Not all servers will support this verb so if its not supported then a message is just sent as Plain text. TLS relies on PKI certificates and the administrative issue s that come around certificate management like expired certificates which is why I wrote th
Read more
All sample scripts and source code is provided by for illustrative purposes only. All examples are untested in different environments and therefore, I cannot guarantee or imply reliability, serviceability, or function of these programs.

All code contained herein is provided to you "AS IS" without any warranties of any kind. The implied warranties of non-infringement, merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose are expressly disclaimed.