Get All Contacts using Lync ContactManager

Question

Right now I'm using the the LyncClient.ContactManager.BeginSearch method to find contacts. However, I haven't been able to figure out how to get all the contacts. I've tried passing "*" and "%" as wild-card characters but that has not worked. Right now here is my function call.

_lyncClient.ContactManager.BeginSearch("*", SearchProviders.GlobalAddressList, SearchFields.DisplayName, SearchOptions.ContactsOnly, 400, SearchCallback, "Searching Contacts");

Answer 1

Lync contacts are organised into groups, so you need to start at the Groups level. Once you've got a group, you can then enumerate through it's Contacts

foreach(var group in _client.ContactManager.Groups)
{
    foreach (var contact in group)
    {
        MessageBox.Show(contact.Uri);
    }
}

This article is good for background, and more advanced features

Edit: Specifically, for the distribution groups expansion question, I think the sample here is flawed.

Instead of calling BeginExpand and waiting on the WaitHandle, provide a callback method to handle the Expand callback. So, instead of:

asyncOpResult = DGGroup.BeginExpand(null, null);
asyncOpResult.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne();

DGGroup.EndExpand(asyncOpResult);

try this:

...
asyncOpResult = DGGroup.BeginExpand(ExpandCallback, DGGroup);
...

public void ExpandCallback(IAsyncResult ar)
{
    DistributionGroup DGGroup = (DistributionGroup)ar.AsyncState;
    DGGroup.EndExpand(ar);

    etc...
}

This works perfectly for me.