I am hoping to get some help on better understanding GALs, OABs and address books in general. It's one of the areas that I feel like I know but realize I don't when specific questions are raised. All of the following assumes Exchange 2010 and Outlook 2010 in a Server 2008 R2 environment. It also assumes that everything is working correctly in regards to the address books updating and replicating properly, my questions pertain to "how does it work" more than "do I have a problem".
My scenario starts with creating a new user in Active Directory. My typical process is to create the user in ADUC in order to copy another user, then move over to EMC to create the mailbox. Can anyone help me out with the following questions:
- Let's assume a user is using Outlook 2010 with cached mode disabled. As soon as I create the mailbox, should that user be able to see the new user in the GAL? How about with cached mode enabled?
- How does the OAB tie into the GAL?
- Is the OAB only for Outlook cached users?
I do know that the OAB updates, by default, at 5am every morning. Afterwards, Outlook will check approximately every 3 hours for an updated OAB. I guess I'm mainly confused on what the exact difference is between the GAL and OAB, or if they're the same thing.
I want to be able to anticipate when new users and/or updated user information will be able to be seen in the GAL within Outlook, either cached or non-cached modes. I want to know if updating the OAB manually during the day will achieve what I need.
I hope to test this in a test environment later tonight but wanted to throw this out in case anybody can assist and make it easy on me. Thank you.