We are deploying an internal company intranet and I have two issues with the primary email area in DNN 5.0.1 and the current AD module v1.05:

1)  For some reason the system is creating an email address for any users that do not have one specified in AD.  We use Exchange as our corporate email system and only SOME of the users have an account. The rest have a blank email field.  The way it is working now DNN is "making up" an email address in the form username@domainname.com whenever the user logs in for the first time.  Any idea why and if there is a way to stop this?

2)  For those users that do NOT have an internal email address (some employees just don't need internal email and I don't want to manage home emails in AD), I need the ability for them to enter a home/personal email address into DNN.  I don't want internal users replacing the AD synchronized email address with a home email address, so I prevented editing the primary email field and created a custom text field for a home email (this also allows Exchange email users to enter a second home email).  The problem with this idea is DNN won't use the custom email field for system emails/etc.  So my idea was to create some logic (perhaps a SQL stored procedure) that checks the primary email and copies over the home email if the primary email is blank.  Also, if they later get an AD email the AD provider should overwrite what is there with the new AD field.  Anyone input on this idea would be much appreciated so I don't waste time developing something if it is already possible.

Thanks!

Oops, you're right, it's the 5.0.1 version.  Sorry about that.

As for your answers, I had a feeling that was the case for #1.  Hmm, as I said not all of our users have internal email and some may not even have outside email.  I may have to add another restraint to #2 to use a temporary "catch all" internal email for new users until they enter a home email on first logon (and if they don't have one it will stay with that catch all address forever).  I guess nobody has run in to this situation before?  I'm kind of surprised...

Nope, on my Windows 2003 server if I don't make an Exchange account the actual email field is blank.  Now "behind the scenes" there is an account name/login that looks like an email address (username@domain) but that isn't actually stored as an email in AD.  I understand the reasoning behind requireing an email  for DNN and the AD provider "making one up" to meet this requirement, but that isn't a very good way to handle the situation in my book.  I mean, why would I want the provider just "guessing" or making up an invalid email to fill a required field.  If it's an invalid email it won't work anyway so why waste time "making it up"? 

I know most companies probably won't use AD/DNN with users without a company email, but sounds to me like the process behind this integration is broken.  Here's how I suggest the AD provider work for this situation:

• Any user without both a DNN and AD email field would be required to enter one into DNN on login (stored only in the DNN database).
• On every future login, if the AD email field is blank the AD provider will leave the manually entered DNN email alone.
• On every future login, if the AD email field has been filled in it should prompt the user which email address to keep (and sync or ignore the sync accordingly).

In my situation we actually want our employees required to enter a home email in addition to the "company"/primary one.  If that were a normal requirement I'd probably add an additional bullet point to extend the AD provider to juggle between the home & corporate email for the DNN primary email field depending on if an AD email is there...

For now  I guess I'll stick with my plan to write a stored procedure (or something) for now as I don't have time (or knowledge) to modify the provider at this point...