Thank you so much! I’m going to try it now. The main problem I’m going to face is the closed loop. I access the internet from a separate laptop. The network Exchange is running on is isolated. So I won’t be able to install builds from the internet in the virtual machine. Perhaps you can download an offline package? And send me the link? Thanks in advance and a special thank you for your efforts
You can download the packages with a browser or a wget or such tool:
wget https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org//work/tasks/7799/122937799/evolution-ews-3.52.4-1.1.fc40.x86_64.rpm
wget https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org//work/tasks/7799/122937799/evolution-ews-langpacks-3.52.4-1.1.fc40.noarch.rpm
then you install them with:
sudo dnf install ./evolution-ews*.rpm
supposing you run the command in the same directory you downloaded the packages to (it can be a flash disk or anything as well).
Greetings!
Today, I was finally able to borrow a virtual machine with Fedora and check out Evolution. Unfortunately, the MiddleName field is not displayed, even when using the offline book.
Thanks for trying
I see. You mentioned you use a custom attribute, and you also mentioned you added the middle name into a standard attribute on one/some contact(s). I’m wondering, whether there’s a way to check whether the offline GAL contains the information or not.
I thought the web interface https://your.exchange.server.com/ecp/ (the same host as you open the OWA address, only the applet is ecp) will allow an administrator to set the middle name for the mailboxes and contacts, but my Exchange 2019 server does not offer it, not as a dedicated field (if they can parse it from other attributes I do not know).
I mean, it’s just about using the standard fields. Once you manage to use that, it’ll show up (plus when I’ll commit the change into the sources and make a release with it).
I tried with the user address book on this Exchange 2019 server to fill all fields of the full name in Evolution and even the title and suffix did not survive, the first, middle and the last name had been saved properly and the OWA interface shows it too. Interestingly, the OWA interface shows a dedicated Middle Name field for a personal contact (with the same value as the Evolution shows), in contrast to the ecp interface.
Could you do one thing for me, please? On that virtual machine, when you just boot it, do not run Evolution, but delete ~/.cache/evolution/addressbook/ directory, then run from a terminal:
/usr/libexec/evolution-addressbook-factory -w | grep ews_populate_middle_name
and then start Evolution from another terminal and go to the Contacts and select the GAL book. I’d like to know whether the terminal with the factory showed anything from the ews_populate_middle_name place. The used patch prints what middle name had been found in the offline GAL, if any.
I’d also try to search the book with the middle name value. If it’s not part of the offline GAL, then it might need to use the “online” GAL. (I’m sorry, this is complicated.)
Yes, Milan, of course!
I did everything as described, tried twice with and without using the offline book cache, but unfortunately no output was displayed in the terminal during the process.
I tried to dig around, but I did not find anything useful to fill the middle name in the GAL contacts. Both the Web UI (https://admin.exchange.microsoft.com/#/contacts) and the “Active Directory Users and Computers” do not let me enter other than First Name, Last Name and Initials. No title, no suffix, no middle name. If it’s possible to set it from the PowerShell, then it doesn’t work for me, because it’s too low-level for me.
I’m getting to understand why you chose to use the custom attribute for the middle name.
When you search ~/.cache/evolution/addressbook/ folder for *.oab files (you might see there one, corresponding to the Exchange account with offline GAL you set up), then when you look into the file, does it contain any sign of a middle name for any of the contacts?
I understood you can see (and use) the GAL’s middle name in the Outlook. How do they do it? Do they let each user map custom attributes to certain contact field? The UI for that is kinda crazy, is it not? I mean, regular users might get confused with it easily, no?