AD Contact Numbers not showing in Lync

Its always frustrating how Administrators don't have any standard format in which they add telephone numbers to user in AD.
Its even more frustrating when Lync WONT collect these numbers and send to the RTCAB database cause they aren't in E.164 format.

It is possible to add normalization rules for modifying numbers from AD to E.164 so that they are recognised by Lync and sent off to the Database.

If this happens the AddressBook Service will gladly distribute these to Lync user via GAL or WEB.

It will even distribute numbers that aren't in E.164 as long as they have a normalization rule in the "Company Phone Number Normalization Rules" text file that matches the format in AD (as per the Extension Example below)

So how does this work?
Simply create a txt file and copy to the Lync Share

....\LyncShare\1-WebServices-1\ABFiles\

Company_Phone_Number_Normalization_Rules.txt

Now populate the txt file with your rules as per the example below:

#Start
#
# Normalize 4-digit extension numbers from Active Directory into E.164
#
# Legacy extensions
#
(\d{4})
+643321$1
#Normalize NZ National Numbers from Active Directory into E.164
#+64$1
0([3-9]\d{7})
+64$1
#Normalize NZ Cell numbers from Active Directory into E.164
#+642$1
0(2\d+)
+642$1
#Extension Dialing for 8xxx range
(8\d{3})
$1
#End


To find further Active Directory Normalization failures navigate to the directory:
C:\LyncShare\1-WebServices-4\ABFiles\00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000\00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000\Invalid_AD_Phone_Numbers.txt

NB
Just be warned, this isnt validated so if you make any typos you wont find this reported

BUT you can test this by running the ABServer.exe -testphonenorm switch.
Simply run the ABServer .exe from the directory:-
C:\Program Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Server\Core

Example


..\Program Files\Microsoft Lync Server 2010\Server\Core\ABServer.exe" -testphonenorm "021 123 4568"