LDAP Server Overview

Your Cloud Voice PBX (Private Branch Exchange, the phone system that routes your calls) can act as an LDAP server, giving your organization a single, centralized phonebook. Contact details are stored on the PBX, so users can dial a colleague or customer directly from a search result instead of hunting for the number and keying it in by hand.

Why you would set this up

With a central directory you maintain each contact in one place. Update a phone number once on the PBX and every phone and app that searches the directory sees the new value. You never have to load and re-load a separate contact list onto each device.

What LDAP does

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is an application protocol for reading and maintaining directory information across an IP (Internet Protocol) network.

It follows a client/server model. The directory data itself lives on the LDAP server. An LDAP client (for example, an IP desk phone or the Cloud Voice App) opens a connection, asks for the records it needs, and the server returns them. Because every client reads from the same source, they all work from one shared set of contacts.

How the directory is organized

An LDAP directory is a network database built from entries, where each entry gathers the information that describes a single entity. Entries are not stored in a flat list, they are arranged in a hierarchical, tree-like structure. The diagram below shows an example of the directory tree that Cloud Voice builds.

Key LDAP terms

Every entry is a collection of information about one entity, and each entry is defined by three things: a distinguished name, a set of attributes, and one or more object classes.

Distinguished Name (DN)

A distinguished name is a globally unique identifier for an entry. It pinpoints both the entry itself and its exact position within the directory tree.

A DN is normally made up of three kinds of component:

• dc: Domain Component, typically one part of the domain name.
• ou: Organization Unit, typically the name of a group.
• cn: Common Name, typically a user’s name.

Think of a DN as the path to a file on a filesystem. For example, the DN cn=amy,ou=extensions,dc=example,dc=proxy1,dc=test,dc=cloudvoice,dc=com maps to the path com/cloudvoice/test/proxy1/example/extensions/amy.

Read a DN like a file path

The parts of a DN run from most specific on the left to broadest on the right. In cn=amy,ou=extensions,dc=example,...,dc=com, cn=amy is the individual contact and the dc= parts at the end are the top of the tree. Reading right to left walks you from the root down to the contact, the same way a file path does.

The Base DN is the root of the directory tree and the point where an LDAP search starts, for example, dc=example,dc=proxy1,dc=test,dc=cloudvoice,dc=com.

The Base DN must match on both ends

When you point an LDAP client (an IP phone or the Cloud Voice App) at this directory, the Base DN you enter on the client must exactly match the Base DN on the server. If the two do not match, the client begins its search at the wrong point in the tree and finds no contacts.

Attributes

An entry can hold any number of attributes. Each attribute pairs an attribute type with one or more values, and those values are the actual contact data. The value format depends on the attribute type.

The table below lists the attributes available for a contact entry, using a sample record.

These are exact field names

The Attribute column shows the exact LDAP field names. When you later configure a phone or client to search this directory, you map its contact fields (such as business number or mobile) to these names, so enter them precisely as written.

Attribute	Information	Example
cn	Contact ID	Leo
displayName	Display Name	Leo Ball
givenName	First Name	Leo
sn	Last Name	Ball
mail	Email Address	leoball@example.com
company	Company	Acme Corp
comment	Remark	partner
telephoneNumber	Business Number	+1-202-555-0134
telephoneNumber2	Business Number 2	+1-202-555-0148
facsimileTelephoneNumber	Fax Business Number	+1-202-555-0134
mobile	Mobile Number	12025550101
mobile2	Mobile Number 2	12025550109
homePhone	Home Number	12025550172
homePhone2	Home Number 2	12025550173
facsimileHomePhone	Home Fax	12025550174
otherTelephone	Other Number	12025550188
postalCode	Zip Code	20500
street	Street	100 Main Street
I	City	Springfield
st	State	Illinois
co	Country	United States

Object classes

An object class defines which attribute types an entry may use and which of those attributes are required rather than optional.

Every entry has one structural object class that declares what the entry represents, a person, a group, a device, a service, and so on, and it may also carry zero or more auxiliary object classes that add extra characteristics.

For example, with the person object class, givenName and sn are required attributes, while attributes such as description and seeAlso are optional.

Required attributes must be present

An entry has to include every attribute its structural object class marks as required, otherwise the entry is not valid. Optional attributes can be left out. For a person entry, that means givenName and sn always need a value.