Platform SDK: MAPI

Optional Features for Address Book Providers

There are many optional features for address book providers. Some of the more commonly implemented features include:

Acting as a foreign provider by allowing entries from one of your containers to be added to another provider's container.
Acting as a host provider by adding entries from another provider to one of your containers.
Advanced searching.
Prefix scrolling through contents tables.
Support for distribution lists.
Support for event notification.

The following table briefly describes these optional features and how you implement them:

Feature	How to implement
Supply templates for creating entries for message recipient lists	Implement the IABLogon::GetOneOffTable method. See One-Off Tables and Implementing One-Off Tables.
Group recipients into a named unit	Support the properties of distribution lists by implementing the IDistList interface.
Act as a foreign address book provider by allowing entries to be added to a container in another provider	Support binding code to data in the host provider by: 1. Supporting the PR_TEMPLATEID property on messaging users and distribution lists. See Address Book Identifiers. 2. Implementing the IABLogon::OpenTemplateID method. See Acting as a Foreign Address Book Provider.
Acting as a host address book provider by inserting entries from another provider	Support binding data to code from a foreign provider by calling the IMAPISupport::OpenTemplateID method. See Acting as a Host Address Book Provider.
Prefix scrolling	Support restrictions on container contents tables. See About Restrictions.
Advanced searching in a container	Support the PR_SEARCH property on containers. See Implementing Advanced Searching.
Event notification	Implement the IABLogon::Advise and IABLogon::Unadvise methods. See Event Notification in MAPI and Supporting Event Notification.

For event notification, your IABLogon::Advise method will be called by MAPI when a client calls IAddrBook::Advise to register for notifications on any one of your containers, messaging users, or distribution lists. However, because supporting event notification is optional, you can return MAPI_E_NO_SUPPORT from these methods. However, MAPI does recommend that you at least support notifications on your contents tables and encourages you to support all types of object notification except for fnevSearchComplete and the fnevCriticalError event to add value.