Purging

Contact Manager imports address books containing entries who are "current", that is, exist on the source when the address book was created. They do not contain information about entries that have been removed from that source. If address books from the same source are imported regularly, these entries that have been removed will remain on the target directory, resulting in an incorrect address book.

To overcome this problem, Contact Manager uses a feature called Purging. Every time that Contact Manager adds a new entry, or updates an existing entry, it can update an expiry date. Every time a contact is updated, this date will be updated also. Those entries that have been deleted from the source will not be updated and hence neither will their expiry date. Purging can then be used that will remove all entries that have an expiry date of a certain age.

Purging is configured in the rules engine. Purging is a per-rule setting, that is only OUs being used by the rules can be purged. For each rule, a purge type and a purge age is set.

Purging takes place after importing of address books has completed.