This was actually entirely accidental, but I was initially trying to find out how to configure either an LDAP or GAL for the mac mail.app and address book. As Wolverhampton university doesn’t use a full exchange server, we are limited to using OWA (Outlook Web Access) to get to our emails. Using OWA isn’t a particularly pretty solution, I prefer using my own mail client which was simple enough to configure using IMAP. There is one major problem though, which is that there is no link to the online address book so typing emails becomes a pain unless I’ve previously sent them an email.
Ideally there is a simple solution, simply configure an LDAP server, but unfortunately a quick call to the Wolverhampton uni IT service desk resulted in a few blank looks some calling of other colleagues and after some questioning asking what exactly LDAP which resulted in being told there isn’t an LDAP server within the university available.
Which would be fine except the GAL available through OWA should be workable as an LDAP but I can’t figure out how to get that working, so a quick google for “university of Wolverhampton LDAP” led me to this page here. I’m not sure this is meant to be publicly visible but it seems to be a set of emails between IT staff setting up the network at Wolverhampton university, and guess what, there IS an LDAP server.
So a quick bit of coding led me to create a search form for this database and the standard internal email directory. While this new database doesn’t have public search ability it does allow you to do a reverse search based on not only first name or surname, but also ID card number or university computer usernames. This is a feature that isn’t available on the default staff student directory, which does show card number, but you can’t search based on card number.
I posted the web search form on my site here. Which basically uses the following code in a form and bit of javascript. All together about 5 minutes work.
<script type="text/javascript">
function dosearch() {
var sf=document.searchform;
var submitto = sf.sengines.options[sf.sengines.selectedIndex].value + escape(sf.searchterms.value);
window.open(submitto,"","width=950,height=600,status=yes,toolbar=no,menubar=no");return false;
}
</script>
<form name="searchform" onSubmit="return dosearch(); target='results'">
Search:
<select name="sengines">
<option value="https://secure.wlv.ac.uk/directory/?q=">E-Mail Directory</option>
<option value="https://register.wlv.ac.uk/ListAccounts.asp?nametofind=" selected>ID Number Directory</option>
</select>
For:
<input type="text" name="searchterms">
<input type="submit" name="SearchSubmit" value="Search">
</form>
One thing to note is that for the sake of security I haven’t copied or touched either database, I just used the currently online databases, as such a university login and password is required to use them, this is the same password used to log into the university computer network.
