• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server

    Manage The Contacts Service In macOS Server 5.2 Sierra

    Every Mac by default has an application called Contacts. macOS Server 5.2, running on Sierra, has a service called Contacts. While the names might imply very different things that they do, you’ll be super-surprised that the two are designed to work with one another. The Contacts service is based on CardDAV, a protocol for storing contact information on the web, retrievable and digestible by client computers. However, there is a layer of database-driven obfuscation between the Contacts service and CardDAV. The Contacts service is also a conduit with which to read information from LDAP and display that information in the Contacts client, which is in a way similar to how the Global Address List…

  • Mac OS X Server

    Address Book Server "Groups"

    I use the term “groups” loosely here. On my list of features that are needed in Lion Server (a much smaller since the advent of 10.7.3 btw) is the fact that Address Book Server doesn’t have groups, resources or whatever you want to call a logical structure that is a place for groups of users to keep contacts whose access can be limited to only certain users. The Address Book client fully understands such constructs, given that it separates the GAL from a user’s contacts and that user’s can themselves have groups of contacts. This area is a huge miss. The reason this annoys me is that you have the…