Hi, I have a department that frequently needs to update the email contacts and distribution groups in our GAL. As I understand it, domain admin permissions are required to add new contacts. This department deals with press releases and frequent email newsletters. This takes a lot of the domain admin's time, especially since Exchange 2010. I've looked at using the shell and scripts, but it still requires manual data entry of names, addresses, and contact info. Is there any way domain users can use Outlook to create or delete contacts in the GAL without domain admin privileges?

There is no way to maintain contacts through Outlook, whether you have permissions or not. It has to be done through the Exchange Management Tools because they are AD objects. Personally I wouldn't use Contacts for this kind of information. Put it in a Public Folder. You can then delegate permissions and they can update it on the fly. Exchange is very poor for handling this kind of information. Simon.Simon Butler, Exchange MVP Blog | Exchange Resources

Thanks, after some research I found the public folder contact list. This is exactly what I needed.

Hi, This is what ECP is for, isn't it? I'm just starting to dive into this but ECP looks like a powerfull tool to manage contacts and distribution groups. From what I have seen so far, you can delegate various permissions to users in order to manage contacts and groups. Sebastian