Objects

Domains Domain Objects Accounts Groups Forwarders Mailing Lists Account Aliases Mailboxes Default Settings CommuniGate Pro has a hierarchy of objects it serves on each installation. On the topmost level there is a set of Domains, and each Domain contains accounts, groups, mailing lists and forwarders. Each account contains one or several mailboxes. Each mailbox contains some number of E-mail messages. Besides these basic objects, CommuniGate Pro supports supplementary objects: Accounts can contain File Sites and Preference Data, Domains can contain certificates and WebUser Skin files, etc.

Domains

Domains are the CommuniGate Pro objects that contain other objects: accounts, mailing lists, groups and forwarders. Each domain has a domain name (client.com, www.company1.com, etc.):

While each CommuniGate Pro Domain has its domain name, it is not necessary to create a separate CommuniGate Pro Domain for each domain name you want to serve. CommuniGate Pro Domains can have domain aliases, that allow you to assign several names to the same CommuniGate Pro Domain. For example, the CommuniGate Pro Domain company.com may have a domain alias mail.company.com. In this case all references to the domain name mail.company.com will be processed as references to the company.com CommuniGate Pro Domain.

There is a special CommuniGate Pro Domain, called the Main Domain. Other CommuniGate Pro Domains are called secondary domains. The Main Domain is created as soon as the Server is installed, and its name is specified in the General Settings. If your Server should serve only one Domain, the Main Domain is all you need and there is no need to create secondary domains. The Main Domain name is used as the Server Name.

Each CommuniGate Pro Domain has its own settings and a set of Domain Objects.

See the Domains section for more information about CommuniGate Pro Domains.

Domain Objects

Each Domain has its own, independent set of Objects: Accounts, Groups, Forwarders, Aliases, Mailing Lists. Each Object should a name that is unique within the Domain. Different Objects in different Domains can have the same names.

Object names are case-insensitive. Object names can contain latin letters, digits, the underscore (_), the minus (-), and the point (.) symbols. The point symbol cannot be used as the first or the last symbol of an Object name.

Object names should not contain more than 128 symbols.

Accounts

An account is the basic service unit: every user served with a CommuniGate Pro server should have an account on that server.

Each account is protected with a password, so only the account owner (and, optionally, system and domain administrators) can have unrestricted access to account data.

When the CommuniGate Pro Server is installed, the postmaster account is automatically created in the main domain. The Master (unlimited) access right is granted to that account.

Accounts are created inside CommuniGate Pro domains.

Each CommuniGate Pro domain has its own set of accounts. Accounts should have unique names within their domain, but two accounts in different domains can have the same name.

Account E-mail address is accountname@domainname address where accountname is a name of a CommuniGate Pro account, and domainname is the name of the CommuniGate Pro domain in which this account is created. Messages directed to this account address are delivered to the account using the Local Delivery module.

An Account may have several names (for example, john.smith and jsmith). An administrator can create account aliases to assign several names to one Account.

Each CommuniGate Pro Account has its own settings and a set of Mailboxes.

Each CommuniGate Pro Account has its own Personal File Site.

Accounts can also store additional information and data. See the Account Data section for the details.

See the Accounts section for more information about CommuniGate Pro Accounts.

Groups

CommuniGate Pro Domains can contain Groups. Groups are essentially lists of account names and/or other groups and sending a message to a group results in sending it to all group members.

See the Groups section for more information about CommuniGate Pro groups.

Forwarders

CommuniGate Pro Domains can contain Forwarders. Each forwarder has a name and contains an E-mail address for redirection. If mail is sent to name@domain.com where name is a forwarder object in the domain.com CommuniGate Pro domain, then mail is re-routed to the E-mail address specified in that forwarder object.

Group and Forwarder Objects are different:

• a forwarder can contain only one address, while a group can contain several addresses;
• a forwarder works on the Router level, substituting its own address with the specified address, while a group object actually processes a message sent to the group and generates a new message copy to be sent to the group members.

See the Forwarders section for more information about CommuniGate Pro Forwarders.

Mailing Lists

CommuniGate Pro Domains can contain Mailing Lists. Each Mailing Lists has a name and it always belongs to some account in the same domain - the Mailing List owner.

Mailing list contains a list of subscribers, and it maintains several mailboxes in the list owner account. Those mailboxes are used to store and archive postings, generate digests, store subscription requests and error reports.

Groups and Mailing Lists are different:

• groups are designed for a small number of members, mailing lists are designed to handle several hundred thousand subscribers per list;
• groups are designed mostly for local members (accounts) and if the subscriber account is renamed or removed, it is also renamed in or removed from all the groups in its domain;
• mailing lists provide a lot of features beyond basic mail distribution: automatic subscribing, bounce processing, archiving and digesting, browsing, posting policies, moderating, etc.

See the LIST section for more information about CommuniGate Pro Mailing Lists.

Mailboxes

A mailbox is the basic storage unit: messages sent to accounts are stored in account mailboxes. Messages can be read from mailboxes, they can be marked with various flags, they can be copied to other mailboxes, and they can be removed from mailboxes.

Each account can have one or several mailboxes. The INBOX mailbox is special: it exists in every account, and it is used to store incoming messages. The INBOX mailbox is created automatically when an account is created. A user cannot remove the INBOX mailbox, but a user can rename it. In this case, a new empty INBOX is immediately created.

CommuniGate Pro allows administrators to create single-mailbox accounts. These accounts contain only the INBOX mailbox.

The CommuniGate Pro Server provides access to account mailboxes via POP, IMAP, WebUser Interface and other modules.

CommuniGate Pro mailboxes can have various formats. Administrators and users can select the mailbox format when they create a new mailbox.

See the Mailboxes section for more information about CommuniGate Pro Mailboxes.

Account Aliases

An Account Alias is an alternative name assigned to a CommuniGate Pro Account. Each Account can have zero, one, or several Account Aliases.

For example, the Account j.smith in the domain2.com Domain can have aliases smith and jsmith. Mail sent to the smith@domain2.com address will be stored in the j.smith Account, and attempts to login as jsmith@domain2.com will open the same j.smith Account.

You can use Forwarders to assign alternative name for Accounts, too. If you create the Forwarder js in the domain2.com Domain, and make it point to the j.smith address, it will work as yet another alias for the j.smith Account.

If you rename the account j.smith into james.smith, all Account Aliases will "move" with it - smith and jsmith will remain the Aliases for the james.smith Account. If you remove the Account, the Account Aliases will be removed, too.

Renaming and removing of Accounts has no effect on the Forwarders: if you rename or remove the j.smith Account, the Forwarder js will continue to point to the j.smith address.

As a result, it is not recommended to use Forwarders where you can use Aliases. Forwarders should be used to create "objects" that redirect mail to other Domains or to other mail servers.

Default Settings

Each CommuniGate Pro Account has individual settings. Settings are specified by the system or domain administrator and most of them cannot be modified by the account owner.

The Account Settings specify the user password and resource limits (maximum mailboxes size, number of files in the Personal File Site, etc.), authentication methods, and other individual options.

It is convenient not to specify the same setting value explicitly for each account, but let all accounts in a domain, or even all accounts on the CommuniGate Pro server use the same setting value that can be modified for all accounts at once. If you specify the default value for an account setting, the system will use the setting value retrieved from the Default Account Settings for the account domain. The domain Default Account Settings can themselves be specified as having the default value, in this case the setting value is retrieved from the global Default Account Settings specified for the entire Server.

Each CommuniGate Pro Domain has individual settings. Settings are specified by the system or domain administrator.

It is convenient not to specify the same setting value explicitly for each domain, but let all domains use the same setting value that can be modified for all domains at once. If you specify the default value for a domain setting, the system will use the setting value retrieved from the Default Domain Settings.

Example:

The global (Server)	Default Account Settings:	Storage Limit = 10Mbytes
The company.com	Default Account Settings:	Storage Limit = 30Mbytes
The client.com	Default Account Settings:	Storage Limit = default

Now:

• If you create an account in any domain, and set its Storage Limit to some value, that value will be used.
• If you create an account in the company.com domain, and set its Storage Limit value to default, the account will be able to keep up to 30Mbytes of mail (the Default Account Setting for that domain).
• If you create an account in the client.com  domain, and set its Storage Limit value to default, the account will be able to keep up to 10Mbytes of mail (the global Default Account Setting for the Server).

When you serve many accounts, you should try to specify most of the setting values as default, so you can easily change those settings for all accounts. If some account should be treated differently, you explicitly specify the required setting value for that account.