Global Address List

The Global Address List, sometimes referred to as the "GAL," is most commonly identified with Microsoft Exchange. The GAL is essentially a directory service within SmarterMail that contains a dynamic list of all contact information for every user on your domain. While individual mailboxes are contained within the GAL, domain administrators can further manage what's included in the GAL in order to hide users that may not represent real people, such as any aliases and/or mailing lists.

Contact information for the Global Address List is pulled directly from the individual profiles of users — a GAL entry isn't a separate copy of your info, it's a live view of your Profile. To update what appears in your own GAL entry, go to your settings area and click on Profile. Here you can edit your information.

Note: If the Global Address List is enabled for your domain, all information you enter into your profile can be seen by all other members of your domain.

Other than the availability of the information within the Global Address List, it functions almost identically as Contacts. The difference is that anything in My Contacts is seen only by you. GAL entries are also read-only for everyone except domain administrators — if you need to correct your own GAL entry, edit your Profile instead of trying to edit the contact directly.

Enabling the Global Address List for a Domain

Before a domain admin can manage individual GAL entries, the Global Address List has to be turned on for the domain in the first place. This is a system administrator-level setting, found under that domain's Features in the System Administrator's Manage Domains area. System administrators can also set whether the GAL is enabled by default for any new domains they create, via Domain Defaults. If your domain doesn't have this feature available, contact your system administrator to have it enabled.

Adding/Removing a User From the GAL

Once the Global Address List is enabled for a domain, domain administrators can actively manage it by adding or removing users as needed. It may be worthwhile for a domain administrator to limit GAL entries to actual employees or users on the domain, excluding things like aliases or generic mailboxes that are used for departments, such as Billing or HR departments.

To change a user's GAL setting, you'll first want to be logged in as a domain administrator. From there, do the following:

Go to the Domain Settings.
Select Accounts from the navigation menu and ensure that the Users tab is highlighted.
Click on the user to edit their settings.
On the User card, enable or disable the Show in Global Address List setting as needed.
Be sure to save the changes.

Note: Aliases and mailing lists aren't automatically excluded from the GAL — each one has this same Show in Global Address List toggle on its own settings page, and mailing lists default to visible. If you want the GAL limited to real employees, plan on reviewing and disabling this setting for any aliases or mailing lists you don't want showing up alongside your actual users.

Global Address List Availability

The GAL is a feature available for any domain that's added to SmarterMail, though whether it's actually turned on is up to your system administrator. If, as a domain administrator, you're not able to find the setting for any new or existing users — that is, add or remove the user from the GAL — you'll want to contact your system administrator to make sure the Global Address List feature is enabled for your domain.