E-mail Aliases Management

E-mail Aliases Management#

E-mail aliases explained

An e-mail alias allow to add another name to an existing e-mail address. Like any other e-mail address, it is composed by a username (e.g., john.doe) and a domain (e.g., example.com) separated by a @: john.doe@example.com.

Aliases prove useful in a number of cases, including:

  • To subscribe to distribution lists or newsletters without using your real e-mail address for privacy reasons

  • To make the management of incoming mail easier by defining suitable filters

  • In company environments, aliases are often used to assign an e-mail address to a role and not to a person. For example, an alias forwards email to the head of the IT department: when the person in charge is replaced, you just need to point the alias to the e-mail address of the new person.

The main difference between an alias and a regular e-mail address is that an alias does not occupy any space on the server to store the e-mail, because all e-mails sent to the alias will be forwarded to the user’s e-mail address. Therefore, deleting an alias will not impact the existing user’s e-mails.

Carbonio CE supports e-mail aliases as any other e-mail server and allows to define and remove them from the CLI, as the zextras user. These is however no way to transfer an alias from one user to the other: you need to first remove the alias from the old user, then assign it to the new one.

Add an alias to an account

zextras$ carbonio prov aaa john.doe@example.com it-operations@example.com

This command adds alias to user .

Hint

aaa is the short form of addAccountAlias.

Remove an alias from an account

zextras$ carbonio prov raa john.doe@example.com it-operations@example.com

This command removes alias from user .

Hint

raa is the short form of removeAccountAlias.