Adding a Contacts Node to your Server Management

So last Friday's post was about how to create contacts, now that you have these, you don't want to be opening up Active Directory Users and Computers each time you want to look at your contact objects. So let's create a node to the Server Management console so we can quickly view our Contacts

Looking back on previous posts, I posted about how to edit the SBS Admin Console. I will assume you've already read this post and simply jump to the adding of the Contacts snap-in.

Let's start by opening the Console in Author Mode.

1. Right click on Standard Management, which is the 2nd item down, and choose New, Query Node ...


2. In the wizard that comes up click Next


3. For the display name, enter "Contacts"


4. For the scope, ensure it says Local domain and click on Create Query ...


5. On the Exchange tab, check off Show Only Exchange Recipients and Contacts, and then click OK followed by Next
6. 
   
7. Choose an icon for your Query Node. Unfortunately you can only choose the items shown in this list. I choose the icon and clicked Next and Finish on the Wizard

That's all there is too it, now you have a new Contact Node at the bottom of your list. I wouldn't try to re-arrange the list order, the order is generated by the order in which you put the objects into the admin console, so you'd have to recreate every item under the location you wanted to put the Contacts node in (of course feasible, but how much spare time do you really have?)

Make sure you arrange the console exactly how you want it to appear the next time it opens (with the correc thing selected and then close the console, it will prompt you to save it when it exits. Choose YES and enjoy the freedom of viewing contacts easily.

One other comment (which may save you thinkers some time) is I tried to add a "New" task to the taskpad so I could easily create new contact objects. You can infact create the new object and have it launch the same thing the Active Directory Users and Computers snap in does, but unfortunately, you have to open (or rather expand) the Active Directory Users and Computers snap-in in order to get this to link to do anything. So naturally it wasn't worth it, since if I had to open this tool up anyways, I might as well create the object in there.