How to push contacts to Microsoft Exchange from Talend?

Question

I'm trying to use Talend Open Studio to sync contacts from a variety of input sources into an Exchange 2007 server.

I know Talend can talk SOAP, and EWS has a WSDL, but having bumped into all sorts of problems trying to marry the two together (since Exchange's WSDL is lacking elements which Talend needs) I don't know if that's the best plan of attack, or if I should be looking at building a more Exchange-specific plugin for Talend using the EWS Java API from MS.

Alternatively, if these are both known to not be possible, I'd appreciate a pointer to an explanation as to why - all the buzzwords seem to line up on each side, after all.

Answer 1

I work at Talend and would be happy to try and help you out a bit, but I myself am not familiar with the Exchange WSDL. I would assume that a SOAP interface from an established vendor like Microsoft is going to be WS-I Basic Profile compatible and should be easily invoked directly just like any regular WS. Would you mind trying the following:

1. What particular elements are missing from the MS WSDL, or is it trying to use some non-standard feature? CXF is fully JAX-WS compliant, and it is certified WS-I BP compliant, so I have to assume something odd is going on.
2. post the WSDL from exchange that you are trying to invoke from Talend.
3. create a proxy client for that WSDL using CXF.
4. Give it a try and send the error message.
5. Generate a mock service provider based on that wsdl using CXF and run the CXF mock and try against that with the CXF wsdl client. This will give you added confidence that the client and wsdl have no problems.
6. you can also try generating a simple test case with just SOAP UI or similar tooling against the Exchange WS.

ps: CXF is apache based open source. It is easy to use and has tight integration with Talend via the ASF suite. But you can also just use it by itself for diagnostic purposes.

Ed

Answer 2

I have been struggling with that too... You can use tSoap for that purpose.
tWebServiceInput does not work for me with EWS.

tSoap->tLogRow

eg:

tSoap component that resolves a given name is the method ResolveNames()
Value to resolve = Thierry

1. Set "Need Authentication" with username and password
2. Set End Point, eg "https://yourserver/EWS/Exchange.asmx"
3. Set SOAP Action, "http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages/ResolveNames"
4. SOAP Version 1.1
5. Set SOAP Message: ... Enter Soap Method enclosed with ".

Joins tSoap to tLogRow

Run the Job. Voila the result...

Starting job xSoap_ResolveNames_LogRow at 13:43 30/05/2012.

[statistics] connecting to socket on port 3682
[statistics] connected
<Header><t:ServerVersionInfo xmlns:t="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types" MajorBuildNumber="685" MajorVersion="8" MinorBuildNumber="24" MinorVersion="0" /></Header>|<m:ResolveNamesResponse xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/messages" xmlns:t="http://schemas.microsoft.com/exchange/services/2006/types"><m:ResponseMessages><m:ResolveNamesResponseMessage ResponseClass="Success"><m:ResponseCode>NoError</m:ResponseCode><m:ResolutionSet IncludesLastItemInRange="true" TotalItemsInView="1"><t:Resolution><t:Mailbox><t:Name>Thierry TYS. Yen Suin</t:Name><t:EmailAddress>thierry.suin@sc-mauritius.com</t:EmailAddress><t:RoutingType>SMTP</t:RoutingType><t:MailboxType>Mailbox</t:MailboxType></t:Mailbox><t:Contact><t:DisplayName>Thierry  Yen Suin</t:DisplayName><t:GivenName>Thierry</t:GivenName><t:EmailAddresses><t:Entry Key="EmailAddress1">SMTP:thierry.suin@sc-mauritius.com</t:Entry></t:EmailAddresses><t:ContactSource>ActiveDirectory</t:ContactSource><t:Surname>Yen Suin</t:Surname></t:Contact></t:Resolution></m:ResolutionSet></m:ResolveNamesResponseMessage></m:ResponseMessages></m:ResolveNamesResponse>|
[statistics] disconnected
Job xSoap_ResolveNames_LogRow ended at 13:43 30/05/2012. [exit code=0]

It should work similarly with a method that creates a contact. Hope it helps because I haven't found a lot of post on integrating Talend with Exchange Web Services despite searching for a long time.