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Address book visibility (GAL)

Keep a single global address list (GAL) while deciding who sees whom with profiles and groups. Ideal for holdings, dealer networks or several organisations on one server.

Global administratorAdmin console › Tools and Migration › Profelis GAL

The rules apply to webmail search, To field autocomplete and GAL search.

Concepts

  • Profile: which GAL entries certain users (a zimlet group or a domain) can see. It has three parts: who it applies to (assignments), what they see (include rules) and who is hidden (exclude rules).
  • Group: the combination of individual members, distribution lists, mail domains and an LDAP filter. Newly created accounts that match the criteria join the group automatically.

Two domains seeing each other

  1. Open Profelis GAL and press New Profile.
  2. Under quick start press the merge-two-domains template (1). The name and domain rows are filled with sample values.
  3. Type the profile name (2).
  4. Enter the two domains in the assignment rows (3) and the include rows (4). If no account needs hiding, remove the exclude row (5) with its remove button.
  5. OK. The profile appears in the list as Never published.

GAL Profile window: merge two domains template

GAL Profile window: merge two domains template

Testing and publishing

  1. Select the profile in the list, press Test and enter a sample account.
  2. The preview window shows the number of visible, hidden and scanned entries and whether the sample account is assigned to this profile.
  3. If the result is right, press Publish in the window. The webmail filter changes only after publishing.

Preview window

Preview window

Zero-result protection

If the test returns zero visible entries, the window shows a red warning and asks you to press Publish a second time. This prevents a wrong filter from emptying users' address books.

Hiding certain accounts

Select the profile and press Edit; in the exclude section add a row of type Account with the address. OK, then confirm with Test that the account is now hidden, and Publish.

Dynamic group

  1. Groups › New Group.
  2. Enter a name. Put individual members in the member e-mail box and lists in the distribution list box, one address per line.
  3. For dynamic membership enter one domain per line in the mail domains box and, for example, (&(ou=Sales)(l=Ankara)) in the account LDAP filter box.
  4. OK. Select the group in a profile with the assignment type Zimlet group.

Membership = member or distribution list or domain or LDAP filter.

GAL Group window

GAL Group window

New accounts do not appear in the GAL

The profile preview scans the domain's GAL sync account. If the domain has no GAL sync account or its polling interval is empty, the scanned count stays 0. Fix: zmprov mds <galsync> InternalGAL zimbraDataSourcePollingInterval 1h and zmgsautil fullSync -a <galsync> -n InternalGAL.

LDAP filter notes

The filter is applied to the values written on the account in LDAP; it does not see values inherited from the COS (to group by COS use (zimbraCOSId=<id>)). Supported syntax: (attr=value), (attr=*), wildcards, &, |, !.