Running windows 2003 standard edition pdc... 2 terminal servers... app. 40 users... How do I create a contact for a user so any e-mail messages sent to his work station would also go to his cell phone email address (external)... not sure how to create the contact in active directory... any help would be appreciated... Thanks

You need Exchange Server to create custom contacts in Active Directory. Exchange extends the Active Directory Schema to include email data.

As an option, you can use the Rules and Alerts wizard in Outlook to automatically send a copy of any message received to an Internet address such as a cellular phone. However, this works best if you are connecting to a MAPI type of email account. If it is a POP3 account, then Outlook would have to be configured to perform automatic Send/Receives every 10 minutes or so otherwise it will not have any messages to process the rules for.

If you are using Exchange Server, it uses a MAPI type account and can hold and process Rules even when the PC and Outlook client are not running. Also, you can use Microsoft ActiveSync for Exchange or a third party add-in such as Good Server that will synchronize your email through the Internet with your smartphone (like a Palm or Windows Mobile based phone).

Another reliable way to do this would be as follows:

In active directory ("users"), it is assumed you have a user called Some Name with an email address of [email protected]in

You could right-click on the "users" folder on the left, and select NEW then CONTACT.
Name the contact something like SomeNamesCellPhone and give it the email address of the cell phone.

Your other users can then pick either [email protected]in for sending emails "to his work station"... or they can select SomeNamesCellPhone to send it to his cell instead.

Optionally, you can then set the user account itself to always forward its incoming email directly to the cell phone contact you created. To do this, you would likely need exchange installed. Do you? If so, right-click the user, properties, exchange advanced, delivery, forward to: pick the contact you made above.

Note that you can ONLY forward from active directory to other active directory objects. The trick is, the CONTACT you created (with external email address), is an active directory object, so forwarding off-site works great.