Hi all,

I have a user with an apostraphe in their name. Exchange allows the e-mail address to have this character, but the newly created OCS account cannot have the apostraphe.

E-mail: Ed.O'hara@domain

Sip URI: Ed.ohara@domain

So the problem I have at the moment, is that when I receive e-mails from this user I dont get presence or any OCS features on e-mails to and from the user as the addresses dont match.

Is there a way around this (witout creating a new e-mail account)

Hope to hear from you soon

Regards

Vern

Vern,

The apostrophe character is not allowed in the SIP URI value, as documented in RFC3261 and confirmed by Microsoft in this article:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2009380

Best practice in this scenario is to add an additional SMTP address to the account without the apostrophe and then configure that as the user's primary SMTP address.  Then use that same address as the SIP URI.

This is one of many reasons to omit special characters from SMTP addresses when creating users, as although Exchange may support then it can cause issue with external processes (e.g. migrations) and integration within other applications.

Thank you Jeff,

Thought it might be the case

Regards

Vern

Fathy,
You may wish to re-read the RFC3261, there is not any mention of disallowing the apostrophe, in fact it is called out as being included...

RFC 3261 refers to URI specification in this section"
RFC 3261            SIP: Session Initiation Protocol           June 2002

19.1.2 Character Escaping Requirements

                                                       dialog
                                          reg./redir. Contact/
              default  Req.-URI  To  From  Contact   R-R/Route  external
user          --          o      o    o       o          o         o
password      --          o      o    o       o          o         o
host          --          m      m    m       m          m         m
port          (1)         o      -    -       o          o         o
user-param    ip          o      o    o       o          o         o
method        INVITE      -      -    -       -          -         o
maddr-param   --          o      -    -       o          o         o
ttl-param     1           o      -    -       o          -         o
transp.-param (2)         o      -    -       o          o         o
lr-param      --          o      -    -       -          o         o
other-param   --          o      o    o       o          o         o
headers       --          -      -    -       o          -         o

   (1): The default port value is transport and scheme dependent.  The
   default  is  5060  for  sip: using UDP, TCP, or SCTP.  The default is
   5061 for sip: using TLS over TCP and sips: over TCP.

   (2): The default transport is scheme dependent.  For sip:, it is UDP.
   For sips:, it is TCP.

   Table 1: Use and default values of URI components for SIP header
   field values, Request-URI and references

   SIP follows the requirements and guidelines of RFC 2396 [5] when
   defining the set of characters that must be escaped in a SIP URI, and
   uses its ""%" HEX HEX" mechanism for escaping.  From RFC 2396 [5]:
"

RFC 2396                   URI Generic Syntax                August 1998

   Characters in the "reserved" set are not reserved in all contexts.
   The set of characters actually reserved within any given URI
   component is defined by that component. In general, a character is
   reserved if the semantics of the URI changes if the character is
   replaced with its escaped US-ASCII encoding.

2.3. Unreserved Characters

   Data characters that are allowed in a URI but do not have a reserved
   purpose are called unreserved.  These include upper and lower case
   letters, decimal digits, and a limited set of punctuation marks and
   symbols.

      unreserved  = alphanum | mark

      mark        = "-" | "_" | "." | "!" | "~" | "*" | "'" | "(" | ")"

   Unreserved characters can be escaped without changing the semantics
   of the URI, but this should not be done unless the URI is being used
   in a context that does not allow the unescaped character to appear.