Scripting address book updates

[Guest]

Hi all,

We have two Ricoh MFDs and two Toshiba MFDs in our office, and it always bugs me that whenever we have staff changes I have to manually update the address book used for scan-to-email destinations, on each copier separately.

I would like to automate this, so that as staff changes occur the address books are automatically updated with no interaction from me. I have this working for some other systems so I can easily "plug in" a script to update the copiers, but I am not sure if there is a known way to remotely modify an MFD's address book from within a script.

Does anyone know if there is an application, preferably open source and works under Linux, that can modify the address book from the command line?

If not, is there any documentation available for how to remotely access the address books, so I might write such an application myself? Having looked at a few Wireshark traces it looks like Toshibas use special SNMP OIDs, and Ricohs use SOAP. I could reverse engineer these protocols but it would save me some time if someone else has done so already.

Any suggestions?

[Choro1dal]

Not sure about the Toshiba MFDs, but most Ricoh MFDs support LDAP searching thus negating the need to create and administer the address book locally.

[copyman20]

DITTO

[Malvineous]

Thanks for the replies. A few people have suggested LDAP before, but unfortunately I have never been able to get it to work the way I want. All I can get it to do is a 'search', which requires people to type in some of their name and browse through the search results. It takes way more keystrokes than using the address book.

If everyone's name is in the address book then they are displayed on the MFD's touch screen and people can just press on their name, which is much faster.

Is there a way of populating the address book from LDAP? None of the Ricoh or Toshiba tech support people knew how when I asked, they said the only way to do what I want to achieve was to keep updating the address book by hand.

It seems that LDAP is designed for a large organisation, the address book is designed for a small one, but because we're in the middle neither of these two options really suit us :-(

[KenB]

Without additional enablers at a considerable cost, I don't see how you could do this, at least on the Ricohs, anyway.

I've never seen a command line or script that can edit the address book.

[Mr Spock]

I believe the Toshiba's can be downloaded and uploaded as a csv file. If so it may be able to macro it in a word doc or something like it.

[Choro1dal]

As originally suggested using LDAP would be the cheapest and most effective method to update address books in real time.
If cost is an issue, and you email addresses are stored in an X500 stye database you could export it to a .csv file then import to the Ricoh MFDs using Smart device monitor for Admin. You would have to import the address book to each MFd individually. If you have a fleet of Ricoh MFDs you could use Web smart device monitor to upload the new address books to all the MFDs sequentially.
If cost is not an issue you need to consider Globalscan NX or Embedded Ecopy.

[Malvineous]

Do you know how to use LDAP to update the address book? I didn't think this was possible.

At any rate I've started reverse engineering the Ricoh SOAP protocol and I've produced a WSDL file, which has allowed me to write a small C++ utility that so far can query the machine's "uDirectory" database and dump the contents of the address book. Next step is to implement an update function so I can change it, then I'll at least have a command line app that can modify the Ricoh address book. uDirectory looks interesting too, seems like it might store some of the copier's configuration too, e.g. the labels used on the different address book groups. Might have to write a uDirectory browser too :-)

[Choro1dal]

The LDAP search facililty can't automatically update the address book, only search a directory. Manual intervention is required to then add the search result(s) to the address book.

[Malvineous]

Not really sure it would help us update photocopier settings. Well at any rate I've got it (mostly) working now, I can retrieve the addressbook and make changes to it, I just have to figure out the annoying SOAP library I'm using which has an awful memory allocation system that causes crashes all over the place. Once I've got it working I'll post some links in case anyone else might find it useful.

[SCR512]

Re: Scripting address book updates

I posted a script I've written that will do this

http://www.copytechnet.com/forums/connectivity/58086-powershell-script-auto-generate-address-book-active-directory-query.html#post254142

[Silthus]

Re: Scripting address book updates

Not really sure it would help us update photocopier settings. Well at any rate I've got it (mostly) working now, I can retrieve the addressbook and make changes to it, I just have to figure out the annoying SOAP library I'm using which has an awful memory allocation system that causes crashes all over the place. Once I've got it working I'll post some links in case anyone else might find it useful.

Hello,

I am wondering if you would still have that link? I am currently in the process of reverse engeneering the SmartDeviceMonitor myself and ran into some problems with later modells giving me an UDIRECTOY_PERMISSION_DENIED exception when calling #putObjects but not on #deleteObjects.

Would be great if you still have that source code.

Thanks in advance!