EWS Cannot Update Exchange Contact Phone Numbers with XML

Question

I want to update my exchange contact using Exchange Web Services SOAP API with XML. I have figured out (painstakingly) how to update all of my desired properties except for Phone Numbers.

I followed the pattern used for updating EmailAddresses (since they are both indexed fields). Here is a sample of my XML Request:

<t:SetItemField>
  <t:IndexedFieldURI FieldURI="contacts:PhoneNumber" FieldIndex="BusinessPhone"/>
    <Contact xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
    <PhoneNumbers>
      <Entry key="BusinessPhone">888-777-6666</Entry>
    </PhoneNumbers>
  </Contact>
</t:SetItemField>

And This is the Error message I received back from Exchange:

An internal server error occurred. The operation failed., Key 'PhoneNumbers' not found for type 'Microsoft.Exchange.Services.Core.Types.ContactItemType'

Seeing as the XML for this operation is largely undocumented, I am under the suspicion I am formatting the XML for the PhoneNumber incorrectly.

To anyone who is using the EWS Managed API 2.0, could you perform this operation and trace the XML output so I can see how it's done correctly ?

Any other information leading to a solution is much appreciated!

Thank you

Answer 1

Seeing as the XML for this operation is largely undocumented, I am under the suspicion I am formatting the XML for the PhoneNumber incorrectly.

There is full documentation for all the XML elements on MSDN https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/aa580675(v=exchg.150).aspx also the protocol documentation has pretty comprehensive coverage https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc425499(v=exchg.80).aspx

With your request I can reproduce the error your getting to fix it all you need to do is Capitalize the K in key eg

<Entry key="BusinessPhone">888-777-6666</Entry>  

to

<Entry Key="BusinessPhone">888-777-6666</Entry>

SOAP (or at least the way it been implemented in EWS) is particular around the case and order of elements. Here's the modified SOAP that work for me

  <soap:Envelope xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages" xmlns:t="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <soap:Header>
      <t:RequestServerVersion Version="Exchange2013_SP1" />
    </soap:Header>
    <soap:Body>
      <m:UpdateItem MessageDisposition="SaveOnly" ConflictResolution="AlwaysOverwrite">
        <m:ItemChanges>
          <t:ItemChange>
            <t:ItemId Id="A...A=" ChangeKey="EQA....Z" />
            <t:Updates>
            <t:SetItemField>
               <t:IndexedFieldURI FieldURI="contacts:PhoneNumber" FieldIndex="BusinessPhone"/>
              <Contact xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types">
              <PhoneNumbers>
                <Entry Key="BusinessPhone">888-777-6666</Entry>
              </PhoneNumbers>
             </Contact>
            </t:SetItemField>
            </t:Updates>
          </t:ItemChange>
        </m:ItemChanges>
      </m:UpdateItem>
    </soap:Body>
  </soap:Envelope>