If you create a Recipient Connection Agreement (RCA) with the ADC tools wizard and then go in to view the settings of that RCA, you may notice that the “Select the objects that you want to replicate” options on the From Windows tab are grayed out and you cannot make changes…
Example:
The reason for this is because of the custom filter created for the RCA by the ADC tools. If you look at the values for the attribute msExchServer1SearchFilter on the agreement itself, you will see a filter specified that is similar to:
(&(|(objectclass=user)(objectclass=contact)(objectclass=group))(|(legacyExchangeDN=/o=ORG1/ou=SITE1/cn=*)(legacyExchangeDN=ADCDisabledMail*)(isDeleted=TRUE)));
This is a custom search filter that (in this case) searches for objects in Active Directory that are either of class user, contact, or group AND that also belong to the Administrative Group called SITE1 (or that have been deleted and need that deletion to replicate across to the 5.5 Directory)
Since this is a “custom” filter, the objects can’t be edited via the normal GUI interface and that is why the check boxes are not modifiable. Once again you can see from the filter that the connection agreement is in fact already set to replicate users, contacts or groups despite what the GUI seems to indicate at first glance.
If you have multiple Administrative groups that have users in the same Active Directory location you would have multiple auto-created RCAs as these will ONLY replicate objects that match the Administrative Group listed in the filter.
For example, a second Administrative Group (called AG2) with objects in the same Active Directory location would have a filter like the following:
(&(|(objectclass=user)(objectclass=contact)(objectclass=group))(|(legacyExchangeDN=/o=ORG1/ou=AG2/cn=*)(legacyExchangeDN=ADCDisabledMail*)(isDeleted=TRUE)));
Ultimately, if you want or need more flexibility with connection agreements (such as limiting or modifying the objects controlled by the RCA) you should create the connection agreements manually using the ADC Services Snap-in instead of having the ADC tools create them automatically.