By Vladimir Tankhimovich
As a Domino administrator, I often have to create shared mail databases used by several people.
There are two basic approaches to do that:
- Create a fake person/mail file and let users switch IDs
- Create a mail-in database and give users access to it
I like mail-in databases. When users ask me for a shared mail file, I always create a mail-in database if I can help it. It takes a lot of arm twisting to make me create a fake Person document. Shared Notes IDs/Person documents are not manageable and are a security risk. There's no way to trace who did what using a shared ID file. An abandoned shared mailbox can be used by a former employee for years without anyone ever noticing.
But a mail-in database has its downsides, too.
You want its return address to be the same as mail-in name, so replies will go to the right place. If you don't do anything about it, the first user of the database will become mail file owner in Calendar Profile, and replies will go to his/her address.
So you want to set the file owner to your mail-in document name. We used to be able to do that in old Domino releases, but flat mail file owner names are no longer allowed.
You still can set the file owner field to a flat name using an agent, but then users won't be able to change their signatures or any other preferences, because input validation won't let them save a Calendar Profile containing a flat owner name.
You can make the mail-in name hierarchical, but then you will have problems addressing mail to the database.
In short, you need a hierarchical mail-in name for Calendar Profile and a flat one for mail addressing. My workaround is to have both. I mimicked Person Document design as shown in Figure A.
FIGURE AThis is my mimicked Person Document. (click for larger image)
The hierarchical Mail-InDB/ORG mail-in name lets you use it as a mail file owner. The flat Mail-InDB mail-in name ensures trouble-free mail addressing.
And that's all there is to it!
Vladimir Tankhimovich is Postmaster at Columbia Law School. Born in Siberia, he came to US in 1995 and has been a Notes/Domino administrator since 1997. Learn more about him at http://www.linkedin.com/in/tankhimovich.