Multiple Identities
Multiple Domains
If you need to send and receive emails at more than one domain Exchange has the power to simplify your life.
Let's say you have two domain names, now-plumbing.com and now-heating.com. Point both of those domains to our service and you can send and receive both through one Exchange mailbox.
Multiple Aliases
If you need to receive and reply to emails as both sales@ and support@ for example, Exchange also has the power to do that.
How is it done?
First, point the domains to our service. See DNS Info for details. One of your identities must be designated as primary, and it will be the basic address on your mailbox. The rest of your identities will be created as Distribution Groups.
When you compose outgoing email, Outlook has a 'From' field as well as 'To', 'cc' and 'bcc'. The 'From' field is normally hidden. Expose it by choosing it from the Outlook 2007 Options menu or 2003 View menu. See the 2007 screen shot below.
If you leave the 'From' field empty, the message will carry your primary mailbox address as the sender and reply address. If you put one of your Distribution Group identities in the 'From' field, the message will carry that as the sender and reply address.
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Multiple Addresses Applied Directly to the Mailbox Object
The configurations described above assume you need to send mail from as well as receive mail to the multiple domains and identities. Let's discuss one more issue. If all your outgoing mail can go from yourdomain.com, but you want to receive mail sent to yourdomain.com, yourdomain.net, yourdomain.org, etc, this is also possible, and much easier to implement.
Similarly, if all your outgoing mail can go from yourfirstname@yourdomain.com but you want to receive mail sent to first@ first.last@ first-initial-lastname@ etc, this is another example of the second and more basic type of multiple aliases.
Exchange mailboxes can and do have multiple addresses applied directly to the mailbox object itself. Addresses in the common patterns first.last etc can be automatically generated based on an address policy which is maintained for your organization.
When we setup your organization, we'll create an address policy based on the information you supply. New users created in your organization will have multiple addresses based on the policy unless you specify otherwise.
One important thing to remember about addresses applied directly to the mailbox itself is that one of them is designated as primary, and that address will be the reply address on all outgoing mail, unless of course you put a Group object in the From field, as discussed above.
Another important factor about addresses applied directly to the mailbox object is that all messages you receive for any one of those addresses will appear to be addressed simply to you. It won't be easy to determine if the message was sent to you@domain1 or to you@domain2 - you'll have to open the options dialog and examine the internet headers of the message to see that info. So if you need to distinguish which of your addresses the message was sent to, use groups.
Putting It All Together
Common variations of your name, first@ first.last@ etc, are typically and most easily applied directly to your mailbox. One address will be designated the primary address and it will be the reply address on outgoing mail.
If you need to send outbound mail from different reply addresses on the other hand, these separate identities such as me@mymaincompany.com and me@mynewstartup.com require the creation of separate objects, as described above.
Groups
Distribution Groups can have one or more members, which must be mailboxes or server-side contacts. This means for example, more than one of your people can get the incoming sales@ emails.
Incoming messages addressed to a Distribution Group can easily be managed and routed using Outlook's Rule Wizard because they clearly show they were addressed to the Group and not to you individually. For example, you might want to use the Rule Wizard to route sales@ messages to a subfolder of your inbox.
Distribution Groups have configurable Send-As permission, so you can designate who has that authority.
We do not charge extra for multiple domains or multiple Distribution Groups (within reasonable maximums). Our hosting charges are per mailbox. See our pricing page for details and maximums.
You must own the domains involved and point them to our systems as discussed in DNS Info.
The use of Distribution Groups and the 'From' field can allow you to wear many hats and play many roles, an increasingly common need in small business today.