Plesk & redirecting email COPIES to another addy? Options

[JVRudnick]

Hey All...

trying to use Plesk to do the following...

one client now wants me to send copies of their emails to their blackberry account AS well as to their normal ME account too..

okay, this is on a w2k3/iis6 Plesk CP box...and the Plesk help file for the item that "closely" looks like it's the one I want to use is GROUPS...

Here's the content...

To set up an e-mail address that will accept mail and forward it to multiple other e-mail addresses:
==========================
Click the Domains shortcut in the navigation pane.
Click the required domain name in the list.
Click Mail in the Services group.
Click the required mail name.
Click Mail Group.
Click Add New Member.
You should add at least one e-mail address before enabling mail forwarding to several e-mail addresses.

Enter the desired external e-mail address into the E-mail input field and/or select one or more of the listed mail name accounts using checkboxes.
Click OK.
Click Enable.
========================

Will this mean that the emails rec'd by the account will BOTH be redirected to the Blackberry AND also remain in the INBOX till the user gets them with their email client?

Anyone know?

Jim

[Squire]

You won't really need a group to do that. You can simply set up the main mailbox as normal so that it has mailbox space, then also set up a Redirect to the 2nd email address. Both will get a copy of each email.

Where I use Groups is if I have an address (say a Customer Service email address) that I know is going to get spammed to death sooner or later. In this case I don't set up an actual Mailbox for the public email address and have it redirect via a Group to whatever other email addresses need to get a copy. That way when the spam starts rolling in to the public address it's an easy one for me to change to sometihng else.

Or if your guy simply needs to be able to get his mail on his blackberry when he's out of the office he could set it up to Leave mail on the server (so that he can get it later on his PC) and make sure his PC isn't grabbing mail from the server when he's out of the office. This way it could all be done from a single email address.

[JVRudnick]

So...a GROUP redirection will mean that...(presupposing that I set the "keep a copy on the server" direction too)...

every email that hits this accounts INBOX will be "copied" and sent to the Blackberry account

and

the same email will continue to reside inside that INBOX until the account holder uses their client email app to login and d/l same and then delete them etc etc.

is this correct? ie both the account email AND the Blackberry can see the same emails - and the user will delete from their own INBOX?

???

OR --

are you suggesting I just REDIRECT via the Plesk CP and then set it to keep a copy on the server itself as an alternative to the GROUP function?

all that really needs to happen is (as you've said) for the user to be able to get any email on either his desktop or Blackberry....but he will need to
be able to delete same from his desktop which is FAIK how things work already...

is that the "best practice" here?

Jim

[markcausa]

Where I use Groups is if I have an address (say a Customer Service email address) that I know is going to get spammed to death sooner or later. In this case I don't set up an actual Mailbox for the public email address and have it redirect via a Group to whatever other email addresses need to get a copy. That way when the spam starts rolling in to the public address it's an easy one for me to change to sometihng else.

Hi Squire! I don't understand this method. If I put "support@domain.com" out there, and the email box didn't actually exist, it was just a forwarder to a real email box, the spam bots would pick up on "support@domain.com" and spam it to death no matter where it's forwarding to, right?

Am I not seeing something?

[alden]

Hi Squire! I don't understand this method. If I put "support@domain.com" out there, and the email box didn't actually exist, it was just a forwarder to a real email box, the spam bots would pick up on "support@domain.com" and spam it to death no matter where it's forwarding to, right?

Am I not seeing something?

Mark,
I *believe* what he is saying is that if support@domain.com gets hammered, he can change the address to something else.

As for the problem at hand, I see a few options, although neither directly involves Plesk:
1) Change the user's account to IMAP. In that case, the BB service should pick up all of the mail from the server, unless the user has deleted it before the BB service had a chance to pick it up (approx. every 15 minutes).
2) IF you use MailScanner, you can add something like the following to your normal.messages.rules:
To: user@domain.com forward user@bbemailaddress

Good luck.

[Squire]

Mark: What Alden said on the Group mailname getting hammered. I basically use that as a ghost mailname, especially when it needs to have an auto-responder set up. It just seems easier to control spam by changing this address every year or so. Our real responses come from our personal email addresses anyway.

Jim:

I"m not sure there's a best practice because you have to tailor stuff to the client's needs. I can however tell you what I do with a client who has exactly the same situation, and it seems to work for him. Though it does mean he gets every single email in both locations.

He has his main email address that he uses from the office of Steve@<insertdomain>.com. It's set up just like any other normal email address on the server. With one small additional choice, that being I've set up a Redirect that points to another email address.

This other email address is SteveBB@, as in Steve's Blackberry.

He gets all mail at both addresses, and has both his PC and BB set up to delete mail from the server as normal.

Where this sort of setup can get a little wonky is it's a one-way redirect. So only mail coming into the Steve@ address gets redirected. But if he sends something to someone from the SteveBB@ account and they Reply To it as normal, it goes only to his blackberry and not to his PC.

What I had him do to overcome this little bugaboo is his Blackberry is set up to retrieve email (via POP3) from the SteveBB@ account, but to Send email (SMTP) from the Steve@ account.

No Group in sight for this sort of setup.

Could I do the same thing with a Mail Group? Sure could. I could do it exactly the same way where the Group had an actual mailbox that was his main PC address, the blackberry set up exactly the same way so that it read mail from one address but sent from the main one. Or I could have the Group set up as a Redirect Only address on the incoming mail side of things, then have both the PC and BB set up to Send from the Group address.

In other words, it's more about what you do at the users end on their PC/BB than it is about what you do on the server.

[JVRudnick]

Thanks Squire....

One thing tho, that still then has me a bit confused...remembering that I'm using Plesk and MailEnable Standard...

The ME Standard has a checkbox for "keep a copy of emails on the server" - and I've checked that. Right now that
client has 100+ emails therein....I know (cause we talked yesterday) that he's rec'd them all. And I know in his own
email client, he's deleted, forwarded, archived them as he sees fit. But the question is, what about those "copies" on
the server? I don't think I can "uncheck" that box, else the redirect to his Blackberry will "empty" the server mailbox
and he'd never get them on his desktop. Yet, I can see this mailbox growing to be thousands eventually - he runs
the city's largest autobody shop and is very very busy.

So, would it be a good idea then to purge the mailbox - myself I mean by logging in via RDC and doing this in ME
itself - say every month? Is there anyway that this can "affect" his emails? My own logic says no, once he's d/l
them to his own Blackberry or desktop, the copy on the server is not needed anymore....but I thought I'd ask as
I'm NOT the guru when it comes to email...

?

Jim

[Squire]

In don't run any Windows/Plesk boxes, so my knowledge of MailEnable is pretty limited. My understanding however is that it is a Delivery Event module, meaning it controls what happens when a user logs in to pick up their email.

If the 'doze version is anything like the *nix version you shouldn't have to have this enabled to get the mail delivery to a second email address. On my *nix boxes it's the user's email client that decides what to do with mail after it's been picked up. With 99.9% of them being set to auto-delete mail from the server after pickup.

If you're utilizing separate email addresses for the PC and Blackberry there should be no reason to ever leave mail sitting on the server. As you right pointed out, leaving it there could become quite a burden.

[alden]

Squire,
You can cheat a little bit with your BB user: when he sends email, BIS can bcc all outgoing emails. You can also set up a rule in Outlook to move those sent items to the "Sent Items' folder and mark them as read (in versions 2003 and newer). You can also set a filter in BIS so that he doesn't receive emails sent from himself and to himself (e.g., from the bcc). If you need info on this, let me know and I'll dig it up.

Jim,
I'm *pretty* sure that unchecking the "Leave Messages on Server" box will NOT cause the BB to clear out the mailbox, but the desktop email client will, so you will not get every email on the BlackBerry that you get to the desktop.
I AM NOT POSITIVE, THOUGH, so please back up the file before trying (when I do it hear with my BB and Outlook 2003, this is the case--I leave that box unchecked and mostly get messages only when my Outlook is closed).

Good luck,
Alden