We figured it out.  Its not obvious how this works but was figured out 
after looking at code.



For those looking at for the answer:



The order is saved to an internal horde preference named "sortorder" 
(type implicit) whenever you click on a column header in the 
browse.php page.  The field name and ascending or descending order is 
saved at that time to the preference.  This order is retrieved and 
used in the compose addressbook.



This method works, though not completely obvious to the users or admins.



Regards.  Please close this ticket.

I think I need more of description of what you are doing to set the 
sort order as I tried to set it to first name and its order is really 
just random.  See attached image.



Please elaborate on what steps you are doing to set first name as the 
sort order.  thanks

The sort order is the same sort the user has picked for that source in 
their Turba preferences. You can supply default preferences in Turba 
for this if you like.

A user has commented to us (and we have confirmed) that in the compose 
window's addressbook dialog there us no sorting being done.



We confirmed that there appears to not be a pattern we can see either.



Is there a way to define the sorted field either hardcoding by 
administrators or offering the user a preference option?



Dion