52.1 Planning Internet Addressing

The following sections help you prepare to set up Internet-style addressing for your GroupWise system:

52.1.1 GWIA Requirement

Internet addressing requires you to have the GroupWise GWIA installed in your GroupWise system. The GWIA connects your GroupWise system to the Internet. To install the GWIA, see Installing the GroupWise Internet Agent in the GroupWise 2012 Installation Guide.

52.1.2 GWIAs Used for Outbound Messages

Each domain in your GroupWise system must be assigned an GWIA for outbound messages. A domain’s assigned GWIA handles all outbound messages sent by the domain’s users.

If your GroupWise system includes only one GWIA, that GWIA must be assigned to all domains and is used for all outbound messages.

If your GroupWise system includes multiple GWIAs, you must decide which GWIA you want to be responsible for outbound messages for each domain. You must select one GWIA as your system’s default GWIA, but you can override the default at each domain.

52.1.3 Internet Domain Names

You must associate at least one Internet domain (such as novell.com, gw.novell.com, or support.novell.com) with your GroupWise system. These Internet domains need to exist in the domain name service (DNS).

After you have associated Internet domains with your GroupWise system, all users in your system can be addressed using any of the domains (for example, jsmith@novell.com, jsmith@gw.novell.com, and jsmith@support.novell.com). The addresses can be used both internally and externally.

Preferred Internet Domain Name

You must assign each GroupWise user a preferred Internet domain. GroupWise uses the preferred Internet domain name when constructing the email addresses that are displayed in the GroupWise Address Book and in the To field of sent messages.

To make this process easier, GroupWise lets you assign a preferred Internet domain to be used as the default for your GroupWise system (for example, novell.com). The system’s preferred Internet domain is applied to all users in your GroupWise system. However, you can override the system’s preferred Internet domain at the domain, post office, or user level, meaning that different users within your GroupWise system can be assigned different preferred Internet domains. For example, users in one domain can be assigned gw.novell.com as their preferred Internet domain while users in another domain are assigned support.novell.com.

52.1.4 Preferred Address Format

You must choose a preferred address format for your GroupWise users. GroupWise uses the preferred address format, along with the preferred Internet domain, to construct the email addresses that are published in the GroupWise Address Book and in the To field of sent messages.

GroupWise supports the following address formats:

As with the preferred Internet domain, you must assign a preferred address format to be used as the default for your GroupWise system. The system’s preferred address format is applied to all users in your GroupWise system. However, you can override the system’s preferred address format at the domain, post office, and user/resource level.

The following sections explain some of the advantages and disadvantages of each address format:

userID.post_office.domain@internet_domain_name

Advantages

  • Reliable format. GroupWise guarantees that each address is unique.

  • Identical user names can be used in different post offices.

Disadvantages

  • Addresses tend to be long and hard to remember.

  • Addresses might change over time as users are moved from one post office to another.

userID.post_office@internet_domain_name

Advantages

  • Guarantees uniqueness if all your post offices have unique names.

  • Identical user names can be placed in different post offices.

Disadvantages

  • Addresses tend to be long and hard to remember.

  • Addresses might change over time as users are moved from one post office to another.

userID@internet_domain_name

Advantages

  • Addresses are short and easy to remember.

  • Backward-compatible with previous versions of GroupWise. (Users won’t need to update their business cards.)

  • Addresses do not change as users are moved.

Disadvantages

  • When you first enable this address format, you might have duplicate user IDs in your GroupWise system. However, in the future, ConsoleOne prevents you from creating duplicate user IDs within the same Internet domain name. The same user ID can be used in different Internet domains without problem.

firstname.lastname@internet_domain_name

Advantages

  • Addresses are intuitive and easy to remember.

  • Addresses do not change as users are moved.

Disadvantages

  • When you first enable this address format, you might have duplicate first and last names in your GroupWise system. However, in the future, ConsoleOne prevents you from creating users with the same first and last names within the same Internet domain name. The same first name and last name combination can be used in different Internet domains without problem.

  • The probability of conflicts increases if any user’s first and last names match any GroupWise domain or post office name, if any two users have the same first and last names, or if any two users have the opposite first and last names (such as James Dean and Dean James).

lastname.firstname@internet_domain_name

Advantages

  • Addresses are intuitive and easy to remember.

  • Addresses do not change as users are moved.

Disadvantages

  • When you first enable this address format, you might have duplicate first and last names in your GroupWise system. However, in the future, ConsoleOne prevents you from creating users with the same first and last names within the same Internet domain name. The same last name and first name combination can be used in different Internet domains without a problem.

  • The probability of conflicts increases if any user’s first and last names match any GroupWise domain or post office name, if any two users have the same first and last names, or if any two users have the opposite first and last names (such as James Dean and Dean James).

firstinitial lastname@internet_domain_name

Advantages

  • Addresses are intuitive and easy to remember.

  • Addresses do not change as users are moved.

Disadvantages

  • When you first enable this address format, you might have duplicate first initial and last names in your GroupWise system. However, in the future, ConsoleOne prevents you from creating users with the same first initials and last names within the same Internet domain name. The same first initial and last name combination can be used in different Internet domains without problem

  • The probability of conflicts increases when using first initials instead of complete first names.

52.1.5 Allowed Address Formats

The preferred Internet domain and preferred address format apply to user addresses as displayed in the GroupWise Address Book or in the address displayed on sent messages.

The allowed address formats, on the other hand, determine which address formats are accepted by the GWIA. There are five possible allowed formats:

If you select all five formats, the GWIA accepts messages addressed to users in any of the formats. For example, John Peterson would receive messages sent using any of the following addresses:

You must designate the allowed address formats to be used as the default formats for your GroupWise system. The system’s allowed address formats are applied to all users in your GroupWise system. However, you can override the system’s allowed address formats at the domain, post office, and user/resource level.

For example, assume you have two John Petersons with userIDs of jpeterson and japeterson. The userID.post_office and userID address formats do not cause message delivery problems, but the firstname.lastname, lastname.firstname, and firstinitial lastname address formats do. To overcome this problem, you could disallow the three problem formats for these users at the user level.

52.1.6 Override Options

In spite of the best planning, some email addresses do not fit the rules and are not processed correctly. You can handle such addresses by overriding the regular address processing, as described in Section 52.2.3, Overriding Internet Addressing Defaults.