Aliases

An email alias is essentially a secondary email address that can be used to represent a single address or a group of email addresses. Aliases are most commonly used for groups of individuals, like a small team of people working on a project or task. For example, in a working environment with multiple email addresses, the office may want to make a central email address that distributes messages to all personnel. The alias, workplace@example.com, can be made for messages to be sent and then distributed to all the employees. Similarly, a "sales@" or "support@" alias can deliver customer inquiries to everyone on the relevant team.

However, an alias can be used for an individual as well. For example, someone gets married and, therefore, has a name change. Their main account can be renamed to their new name, then their former account can be created as an alias that points to their newly named account. For example, Jane Harris (jane.harris@example.com) gets married and is now Jane Rogers. The jane.harris account can be renamed to jane.rogers, then a jane.harris alias can be created that sends the email to jane.rogers@example.com — so mail sent to her old address keeps arriving.

When viewing the Aliases tab in the Accounts area, aliases can be created with the New button, opened for editing by clicking them, and removed by selecting one or more and using Delete. The following information is listed for each alias:

• Account - The "username" of the alias, which is used when sending an email to the alias, chatting the alias (if available), etc. If an alias has been designated as the domain's catch-all, "(Catch-All Alias)" displays after its name.
• Display Name - The friendly name given to the alias.
• Description - A brief description/explanation of the alias.
• Email Addresses - The total number of addresses associated to the alias. E.g., 6 would mean messages to the alias are delivered to 6 email addresses.
• Internal - Denotes whether the alias only accepts mail from senders on the same SmarterMail server.
• All Users - Denotes whether the alias incorporates all users of the domain as opposed to individual email addresses. E.g., an "Office" alias would probably include all users.
• Send From - Denotes whether alias members are able to send from the alias.
• Show in GAL - Denotes whether the alias will be displayed in the Global Address List (GAL).
• Show in Chat - Denotes whether the alias will appear as a room when using Chat.
• Catch-All - Denotes whether the alias is being used as the domain's catch-all. (See the note about catch-all aliases, below.)

Adding Aliases

Whether creating a new alias or editing an existing one, the following options will be available:

• Name - The name of the alias. This name will be used to create the email alias address. For example, if you want to use the email alias address "info@example.com", you'd simply use "info" for the Name. (You do NOT need to add the domain to the end of the name — that's supplied automatically.) The name can't duplicate an existing user, alias, mailing list or resource on the domain.
• Display Name - This is the friendly name used for the alias. When used in conjunction with "Alias can be used as from address in webmail", this is the display name that appears as the sender in the recipient's inbox.
• Email Addresses (one per line) - Type the full email address(es) of the user(s) who should receive emails sent to this alias. Addresses outside the domain can be included as well — useful when, say, a contractor with an external address needs to receive mail sent to a team alias.
• Description - An optional note about what the alias is for. This only appears in the Aliases grid, so it's a good place to record the alias's purpose for other administrators.
• Internal use only - Enable this option so the alias only accepts messages from senders hosted within the same SmarterMail server. This is an easy way to keep an "allstaff" alias from becoming a spam target, since outside senders can't deliver to it.
• Include all domain users - Enable this option to include all domain users automatically in the alias. New users are picked up automatically, so an "office" alias never goes stale as staff come and go.
Note: This option does not override the email addresses listed in the Email Addresses box. If selected, all domain users will be included in addition to the users entered in the Email Addresses text box.
• Alias can be used as from address in webmail - Enable this option to allow alias users (those users/accounts that are part of the alias) to manually change their From address to the alias email address on new emails and replies. When a user sends mail as an alias, the recipient will see the alias's Display Name as the friendly From address. If the Display Name for the alias is blank, the user's Display Name shows. This lets a support team reply "as" support@example.com rather than from their personal addresses.
• Show in Global Address List - Enable this option to display the alias in the Global Address List. This is enabled by default for new aliases, and is useful for aliases everyone should be able to find — though you may want to disable it for aliases with narrow, internal purposes.
• Show as a room in chat (Enterprise Only) - Enable this option to allow the alias to appear as a room in Chat. Enabling aliases for chat means that chats can be sent to the alias, and everyone in that alias, from within webmail as well as when using third-party chat clients.

A Note About Catch-All Aliases

A catch-all alias is simply that: an alias that catches all email sent to a domain that doesn't correspond to an actual user — mistyped addresses as well as addresses that simply don't exist. Catch-all aliases can be useful as long as they are monitored and kept clear of unwanted email. However, due to the nature of email and the amount of spam that is sent every day, a catch-all can become a burden to email systems and to domain administrators — SmarterMail itself warns that using one "will result in this domain becoming a spam target." Therefore, it is suggested that they be used sparingly, or not at all if it can be avoided. Furthermore, it is important to never set an autoresponder for a user that the catch-all forwards to as it may result in backscatter, causing additional bandwidth usage and potentially causing your domain to be blacklisted.

To select an existing alias as a catch-all, domain administrators should go to the domain's General Settings and select the alias in the Catch-all Alias field on the User/Alias card. (This field only appears when the system administrator allows the domain to use a catch-all.) Once set, the alias is flagged in the Aliases grid with a Catch-All checkmark and a "(Catch-All Alias)" tag.