The Directory

The Address Book server service is used to share contacts between multiple devices. But these contacts are used with a single account. Some choose to use a second account to share contacts between a few users, just using the same username and password to install the secondary account. However, this is error-prone, lacks accountability, and while it might work for a while, just isn’t how the server is intended to be used. Sharing contacts between accounts is meant to be done using LDAP rather than CardDAV.

Global address lists, referenced as The Directory, are contacts available to all users in an OS X environment. These lists are then accessible to everyone in a server environment. The “Include directory contacts in search” checkbox (Figure 4-1) enables shared contacts. Said checkbox is greyed out and not an option until the server has been made into an Open Directory server, the configuration of which is covered in Chapter 2.