EWS Create Contacts converts email to Exchange distinguished name instead of SMTP - exchangewebservices

Question

I have a C# Console application that uses EWS (Exchange Web Services) to impersonate a user and I create or update his current Contacts list.
In order to determine if I have to create or update his list, I first need to search his existing Contacts for a particular domain name like so:
private static IEnumerable<Contact> GetExistingContacts(ExchangeService service)
{
var domainToFilterOn = "#contoso.com";
SearchFilter sfSearch = new SearchFilter.ContainsSubstring(ContactSchema.EmailAddress1, domainToFilterOn);
FindItemsResults<Item> contacts = service.FindItems(WellKnownFolderName.Contacts, sfSearch, new ItemView(int.MaxValue));
var results = contacts.Cast<Contact>().ToList();
return results;
}
The problem I’m facing is that the method GetExistingContacts() yields 0 results for the given domain name which is wrong since I know I have a bunch of Contacts holding the #contoso.com domain name inside the EmailAddre1 field.
After a little bit of digging and testing, I finally figure out why the method wasn’t returning any results and the reason was because the email addresses are stored in the Exchange distinguished name instead of the SMTP format.
To further my investigation, I created a few new Contacts with fake/non-existing #contoso.com domain name like: test#contoso.com, gazou#contoso.com, etc.
To my surprise, the GetExistingContacts() method started to return these fake Contacts.
The conclusion is that whenever I create new Contacts that have resolvable email addresses, then these Contacts are stored using the Exchange distinguished name but when I create new Contacts that have non-resolvable email addresses, then these Contacts are stored as SMTP (which are returned by my GetExistingContacts() method).
How do I start fixing this?
Is my search method wrong? Is there another way to search inside the EmailAddress1 field?
Meanwhile, I managed to find a workaround using the .Load() method of the Contact object but this workaround seems ugly and costly in terms of execution time.
I basically get all Contacts, loop and call the Load() method, then add them to a List() and make a Linq query to filter the results. If my user has 800 Contacts, that takes a long time to Load() everyone of them.
Here’s the example:
private static IEnumerable<Contact> GetCurrentContacts(ExchangeService service)
{
var contacts = new List<Contact>();
var data = service.FindItems(WellKnownFolderName.Contacts, new ItemView(int.MaxValue));
foreach (var item in data.Items)
{
if (item is Contact)
{
item.Load();
contacts.Add(item as Contact);
}
}
var result = contacts.Where(x => x.EmailAddresses[EmailAddressKey.EmailAddress1].Address.Contains("#contoso.com")).ToList();
return result;
}
Needless to say, I don't think that is the correct approach although it works.
Another alternative I’ve tried was to force the RoutingType to SMTP thinking it would create the new Contact in the SMTP format as opposed to the Exchange distinguished name but unfortunately, the email address still gets stored in the Exchange distinguished name disregarding the fact that I forced the RoutingType like so:
var email = new EmailAddress();
email.Address = "goodemail#contoso.com";
email.RoutingType = "SMTP";
Contact contact = new Contact(service);
contact.EmailAddresses[EmailAddressKey.EmailAddress1] = email;
...
contact.Save();
If anyone can help me shed some light on this, that would be great!
Thanks in advance

Answer 1

If the SMTP address your trying to use for a Contact is visible (or resolvable) in the Global address list then the X500 address of Directory entry will be used to track the Contact to the Directory entry (this is by design). If you want to return the SMTP address instead of the X500 address when you retrieve the contacts all you need to do is make use you do a GetItem or Load in the Managed API on the contact or contacts in question if you have multiple contact use LoadPropertiesFromItems https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/exchangedev/2010/03/16/loading-properties-for-multiple-items-with-one-call-to-exchange-web-services/
You can override this behavior by setting the extended properties on the contacts directly see https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/exchange/en-US/2b375c56-bee1-4d88-b638-f95649ef964a/use-ews-create-a-contact-which-has-a-same-email-address-in-gal-it-will-show-up-with-x500-formatting?forum=exchangesvrdevelopment but I would recommended you stay with the default behavior you can make you code more efficient using batch Loads.

Answer 2

Thank you #Glen Scales, the LoadPropertiesForItems() helped.
This is the final result if anyone cares:
private static IEnumerable<Contact> GetExistingContacts(ExchangeService service)
{
var contacts = new List<Contact>();
var filterContactsOnDomain = "#contoso.com";
var data = service.FindItems(WellKnownFolderName.Contacts, new ItemView(int.MaxValue));
if (data.TotalCount > 0)
{
service.LoadPropertiesForItems(data, new PropertySet(ContactSchema.EmailAddress1));
foreach (var item in data.Items)
{
if (item is Contact)
{
contacts.Add(item as Contact);
}
}
}
var result = contacts.Where(x => x.EmailAddresses[EmailAddressKey.EmailAddress1].Address.ToLower().Contains(filterContactsOnDomain.ToLower())).ToList();
return result;
}
The only thing I dislike is having to get all Contacts (800 of them), load the EmailAddress1 field for all 800 of them, loop and add those 800 Contacts to a list and then, filter on that list...
I guess it would've been nice to have the ability to search (or filter) directly on an X500 email address format thus not having to fetch all 800 Contacts.
Oh well...
Thanks again #Glen Scales