Hi we have a problem where people on subnets other than are main office can't seem to do a search properly for a new contact. The complaint from the users are

"When we are at an office other than the main office, searching for a contact returns No Matches. Typically, we are able to use the manual process of clicking on the Add a Contact Icon> Add a Contact Not in my Organization> Other> entering the email address for the person in the IM Address field."

Is there some subnet variable we need to add somewhere?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Are the contacts in your Active Directory or external contacts?

Is the global address book being downloaded?  Look for GalContacts.db in the following folder

• Lync 2010: %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Communicator\username@sipdomain.com
• Lync 2013: %userprofile%\appdata\Local\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync\username@sipdomain.com

Is there any firewalling between the remote offices and the front end server?

Hi thanks for helping.

We are using Lync 2013 client with the Lync 2010 backend if that makes a difference. I have checked both a system that is working and one that is not at this location

%userprofile%\appdata\Local\Microsoft\Office\15.0\Lync\username@sipdomain.com

and there is no Galcontacts.db in either pc.

There are no firewalls between the main office and any of the remote locations.

On your own machine or a test machine, I'd exit the client (not just sign out) delete that directory mentioned above, and log back in to see if you get a galcontacts.db assuming you're in the working subnet.

This should tell us a bit more.

If it fails: You've got a bigger problem, and people are looking at old cache files for contact lookup.

If it works: You've likely got a networking or DNS issue somewhere. 

Also, from the Lync server, try Test-CSAddressBookService https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg398661.aspx and look for issues.

Here's a decent troubleshooting article from Curtis that I've used in the past: http://blog.insidelync.com/2012/02/lync-address-book-client-synchronization-errors-and-common-problems/

Once the issue is resolved, consider setting your address book search to a pure web query rather than relying on downloaded cache as well: http://blog.schertz.name/2010/11/forcing-lync-address-book-web-query/

I have investigated further and we are set for Web query only. The Test-CSAddressbookwebquery works as well as the Test-CSAddressBookService from one of the front end servers. The CABS Server Internal URL goes through a load balancer. I wonder if that is where the issue is if it works from a server but not from a client.

Thanks

Interesting.  I'd take a client and modify the HOSTS file so the lync pool and internal web services FQDN (per the topology builder) records resolve directly to one of the front end servers, avoiding the load balancer... if that makes a difference, you have your culprit.  But you're saying it works from the main office, do they use the same load balancer?  Is the workstation image any different between offices?  Any software that may interfere with web traffic?

Hi,

Did the issued users couldn't search others with user name or also with sip address?

If they could find other with sip address but user name, it can be the issue of the msRTCSIP-GroupingID.

Please make sure there is no special msRTCSIP-GroupingID value for the Lync accounts both with main and other office.

Best Regards,

Eason Huang

Did Eason's answer help or are you still having issues?

It did help as did the other responses, the problem is not solved but I was pulled off from it to work on other items. The responses given enabled me to have a better understanding of the process.

Thanks