bob@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu (Bob Cunningham) (03/17/89)
I'm implementing, for an organization of several hundred people, a scheme where everyone can potentially receive e-mail via standardized aliases (no matter how cute their username is, or what machine they actually receive e-mail on, or even if they don't have a current e-mail address) using individual's first initial and last name. Thus, I'm rcunningham@ourdomain and for folks who use nicknames (like "Bob"), also bcunningham@ourdomain I've already done this for the 40% or so of people who are active e-mail users. It seems to work well, but now I'm working on people who don't normally use e-mail. If you've already done (or thought of doing) something like this, I'd like to hear how you treat: 1) Ambiguities like Ron Cunningham and Robert Cunningham. I've seen setups that capture a message to "rcunningham" and send back a message to the effect that's it ambiguous, please choose: roncunningham or robertcunningham Before I "roll my own" program to do this (or in some other manner resolve ambiguities) I'd like to find out how others might do it. 2) Addressees who don't or won't handle e-mail themselves. I plan on having several generic mailboxes handled by people like secretaries to handle mail for multiple people in this category. If I can't fully resolve delivery this way, I plan on knocking loose e-mail off to a printer for hand delivery. Again, before I "roll my own" solution, I'd like to hear from others who might have tried this. 3) Fixing up outgoing "From:" addresses. If possible I'd like to have outgoing mail look as if it is from, for example "rcunningham@ourdomain" rather than "bob@mymachine.domain". I've don't believe I've actually seen this done before, but it sounds interesting...though I'm not sure exactly how to do it. Any rational advice gratefully received. Bob Cunningham Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, University of Hawaii bob@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu
barriost@rigel.UUCP (Tim Barrios) (03/19/89)
In article <3498@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>, bob@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu (Bob Cunningham) writes: > I'm implementing, for an organization of several hundred people, a > scheme where everyone can potentially receive e-mail via standardized > ... > If you've already done (or thought of doing) something like this, I'd > like to hear how you treat: when migrating to a new computing/mail environment (700 Apollos running Unix mail), we spent a lot of time deciding on a user ID scheme that was consistent across all users. the basic idea was that you should be able to send mail to someone if you know their name even if you don't know their user ID. what we decided on was <last name><first initial>. the only reason we went with the last name first was for sorting purposes. in case of a conflict (many 'smith's or even 'robert smith'), the user can use a nick-name as the initial ('b' for bob) and/or an additional middle initial id necessary. we find that this scheme makes it so that you can send mail to someone that you meet in a hallway or meeting at least 95% of the time. Enhancements to this scheme might include using upper case letters to distinguish name locations and/or some sep character (some users didn't like this since it could involve hitting the shift key in a user ID) such as: CunninghamRE, RECunnungham, Cunningham.RE, RE_Cunningham... -- Tim Barrios | "Integrate, Automate, UUCP: ...!ames!ncar!noao!asuvax!gtephx!barriost | or Evaporate"
dewey@sequoia.UUCP (Dewey Henize) (03/19/89)
In article <421a3fa7.16e4b@rigel.UUCP> barriost@rigel.UUCP (Tim Barrios) writes: }In article <3498@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>, bob@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu (Bob Cunningham) writes: }> I'm implementing, for an organization of several hundred people, a }> scheme where everyone can potentially receive e-mail via standardized }> ... }> If you've already done (or thought of doing) something like this, I'd }> like to hear how you treat: } }when migrating to a new computing/mail environment (700 Apollos running }Unix mail), we spent a lot of time deciding on a user ID scheme that was }consistent across all users. the basic idea was that you should be able to }send mail to someone if you know their name even if you don't know their }user ID. what we decided on was <last name><first initial>. the only }reason we went with the last name first was for sorting purposes. in case }of a conflict (many 'smith's or even 'robert smith'), the user can use a }nick-name as the initial ('b' for bob) and/or an additional middle initial }id necessary. we find that this scheme makes it so that you can send mail }to someone that you meet in a hallway or meeting at least 95% of the time. Or you could instead just add a tool to allow folks to LOOK UP an address. We did that here - we didn't want to get into the mold of 'last name, initial, serial number, rank, etc :-), so we just built a little shell that allows lookup. No big deal, a couple people found it interesting to play with, it works... ---- #!/bin/sh # # extract possible names for mail from the passwd file. # if [ ${1}"test" = "test" ]; then echo "usage: whomail <list of names, addresses, or strings>" exit 0 fi string="$1" shift while expr $# '>' 0 >/dev/null do string="$string|$1" shift done ypcat passwd | sed -e "s/:[^:]*:[^:]*:[^:]*:/ - /" -e "s/:.*//" | \ egrep "`echo $string | tr 'A-Z 'a-z'`" ---- obviously, if you aren't using YP, you replace the 'ypcat passwd' with what you need (like 'cat /etc/passwd'), or whatever, but it allows lots of freedom in names. Dewey Henize -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | There is nothing in the above message that can't be explained by sunspots. | | execu!dewey Dewey Henize | | Can you say standard disclaimer? I knew you could. Somehow... | -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
chip@ateng.ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) (03/22/89)
According to bob@kahala.hig.hawaii.edu (Bob Cunningham): >I'm implementing, for an organization of several hundred people, a >scheme where everyone can potentially receive e-mail via standardized >aliases [...] even if they don't have a current e-mail address) >using individual's first initial and last name. I think my "deliver" program (currently at patchlevel eight) might provide part of the solution to this problem. It works with BSD or USG Unix, and it provides the ability to execute arbitrary commands to control delivery of incoming mail. Be sure you have Smail, though. For example, for those users who don't have accounts, you can have deliver print the message instead of doing normal delivery. Assuming the existance of a text file "del.aliases" that looks like this: bcunningham rc@foo dicknixon [print] rcunningham rc@foo richardnixon [print] (Be sure it's sorted.) Then you can use a system delivery script like this: for u do # Look up the given name n=`look "$u " del.aliases | awk '{ print $2 }'` # Take action based on result of lookup case "$n" in *@*@*) echo $n ;; *@*) n1=`expr $n : '\(.*\)@.*'` n2=`expr $n : '.*@\(.*\)'` if [ $n2 = `uuname -l` ] then # Local user echo $n1 else # Remote user cat $HEADER $BODY | rmail $n ;; fi ;; [print]) cat $HEADER $BODY | lpr ;; *) echo $u ;; esac done This does the obvious thing, i.e. print those with entries that say "[print]". This script would be *much* clearer in Perl, but since not all systems have Perl, I can't just assume it's available. -- Chip Salzenberg <chip@ateng.com> or <uunet!ateng!chip> A T Engineering Me? Speak for my company? Surely you jest! "It's no good. They're tapping the lines."