7.24. Setting Up a Role Email Address
Problem
You have a role account such as "postmaster" for which you need to accept messages.
Discussion
This problem is actually pretty simple to solve; in fact, it is so simple to solve that there are at least four different ways to solve it:
- A mailbox-enabled user
Creating a new user and mailbox for each role address is perhaps the simplest method up-front, but it is not terribly scalable if you have a large number of role addresses to manage. Under Exchange 5.5, you could just create a new mailbox and associate it with an existing user, but the one-to-one link between mailboxes and user accounts in Active Directory prohibits this and leads to a lot of overhead. Busy role accounts will need to be checked often by at least one delegate, possibly more, to avoid running into quota issues.
- A mail-enabled group
A distribution group provides an easy way to send role account email to multiple recipient mailboxes, as well as providing an easy method to control recipient access. However, busy role accounts will raise traffic levels for every member of the group, leading to possible quota troubles.
- A mail-enabled public folder
If you are using public folders in your organization or are willing to begin, this option offers a lot of benefits, including freedom from worries about quotas in your user mailboxes.
- Secondary mail address on an existing mail-enabled resource
This option makes use of existing mail-enabled objects in Active Directory, such as users, groups, ...