[Clug-tech] Kontact, global address books and dist lists

[Curtis Rempel]

Here's the scenario:

A number of Kontact users on a local network have their own address books and 
corresponding distribution lists.  There is the need to have a global address 
book and dist lists to avoid the obvious pitfalls of maintaining multiple 
copies.  

While Kontact can hook into an LDAP back end, maintaining that back end using 
some sort of external interface (since it cannot be done within Kontact) is 
problematic - either the standard command line tools or something like 
phpldapadmin would do, but in both cases, administration by end users is 
required and neither tool is appropriate for the skillset at hand.

Further, global distribution lists are required from the global address book 
which is not something I think is possible just using the simple LDAP 
connection alone with Kontact.  If I'm wrong about that, please chime in.

Before I go wandering off into the Kolab wilderness, never to be heard from 
again, does anybody know if Kolab supports this global dist list capability?  
I know you can hook Kontact into Kolab and use the addressbook that way, but 
what I am not sure is if that global address book provided by Kolab will also 
let users use dist lists globally in the same way that they currently do with 
their own local copies.

Does anybody have any experience in this area and know for certain if this 
will or will not work?  I'm having some difficulty trying to nail down this 
feature in the docs without going through the trouble of setting of a test 
environment.  

Alternatively, is there something else that would work for a global address 
book and global dist list with Kontact?   There is no requirement at this 
time for anything other than the address book and dist list features of Kolab 
so Kolab might be overkill if something else will do the trick.

Thanks for any insight!

Curtis