HowTos/Public Folders

Managing eMail Addresses for Public Folder

To assign an eMail address to a public folder, use the following steps: First, you need to find out the name of your primary mailnode. At the shell prompt, type the following command to find out your system's default mailnode:

omshowmn

If multiple mailnodes are listed, the one marked with the double star ("**") is the primary, as in

        **      scalix,demo
                scalix,training

The mailnode is displayed in "positional format", i.e. it's components are separated by comma (","). There can be up to four components. These are named OU1-OU4, from left to right. Using this naming, the mailnode can also be rewritten in "tagged attribute" format. For example, if your mailnode is scalix,demo, it can also be written as OU1=scalix/OU2=demo; if it's only mynode, it is rewritten OU1=mynode and if it is scalix,hq,sales, it can be rewritten OU1=scalix/OU2=hq/OU3=sales. You will need to specify the mailnode in tagged attribute format in the next command. To add the address to the folder, use the following command syntax:

omaddent -e "G=USER/S=+BB/<Mailnode>/DDT1=BB/DDV1=<Folder>/IA=<SMTP Address>/CN=<Display>"

In this command line,

• <Mailnode> represents your primary mailnode,
• <Folder> represents the Name of your public folder,
• <SMTP Address> is the Internet address you want to use and
• <Display> is the name of the address entry as it will appear in your address book.

For example, use

omaddent -e "G=USER/S=+BB/OU1=scalix/OU2=demo/DDT1=BB/DDV1=Orders/\
IA=orders@scalix.com/CN=Orders Basket"

to add the Internet address orders@scalix.com to a Top-level public folder called Orders. You will also see an entry in your Outlook and SWA address books, so that internal users can also send email to the folder. To specify a subfolder, use the ">>" syntax, i.e. use "Orders>>Incoming" to specify a subfolder called incoming under the top-level "Orders" folder. This can be nested.

To avoid displaying the entry in the addressbook, add

/EX-CDA-DIRECTORY=1

to the end of the attribute list when adding the entry. To specify multiple Internet addresses for a single folder, use the

IA=<SMTP Address 1>=<SMTP Address 2>=...

syntax when specifying the Internet address.

To change the address for a folder that already has an address assigned, use the following command syntax:

ommodent -e "G=USER/S=+BB/<mailnode>/DDT1=BB/DDV1=<Folder>" -n "IA=<New SMTP Address>"

This, with different parameter values for the -n option, can also be used to change the display name or the "exclude from addressbook" attribute. To remove the "exclude from addressbook" attribute, set it to an empty value, i.e.

-n EX-CDA-DIRECTORY=

Finally, to remove an email address from a public folder completely and let it disappear from the internal address book, delete the directory entry using the following command syntax:

omdelent -e "G=USER/S=+BB/<mailnode>/DDT1=BB/DDV1=<Folder>"

Managing Permissions for Public Folders

Permissions for Public Folders are managed with Access Control Lists (ACL). In addition to mailclients which are able to set permissions we can set, display and modify ACLs from the command-line.

As there are several other types of resources which will work with ACLs too we have to specify the resource which we want to manipulate. The resource name for Public Folders is "bulletin", abbreviated "bb".

The invoker of the ACL-commands has to have at least configuration capability for the specified resource.

To display the defined permissions for a folder "My Folder" we can use

omshowacl -t bb -l ":My Folder"

Please note the colon at the beginning of the foldername.

To view the permissions of a nested folder "My Subfolder" below "My Folder" we use

omshowacl -t bb -l ":My Folder>My Subfolder"

omshowacl will also work with direct reference numbers, but this is more useful for people who use IP-adresses instead of hostnames. Reference numbers can be used be in scripts too.

Lets have a look at the output of omshowacl. A folder with standard permissions will look like this:

Scalix Administrators                    config read see delete attach
Local Users                              none
Default                                  read see attach

We can see the predefined groups with their actual permissions.

see:      can only see the subject of the Public Folder
read:     can open the Public Folder and access the content
attach:   can put some things into the Public Folder and delete own stuff
delete:   can throw away things other people have attached
config:   can rename, delete Folders, set ACLs, can not add items

Modification is possible with the ommodacln command (mind the "n").

ommodacln -t bb -l ":My Folder" -g Default -c delete.

to be continued..

Maintaining Public Folders

t.b.d.

Public Folder Replication in Multi-Server Configurations

t.b.d.