UBC_Webmail Accounts

Not sure where this could go, but just sticking in this stuff because I've already had to dig through e-mail to remember it before. Perhaps something to consider for 3.1....

George Lindholm would like the ability to set the Reply-To mail header. Paul Gazda is interested in the multiple account aspect since "we have a request to have different From addresses and signatures depending on which account a user is logged into." I, AmosG, am interested in something similar, using the terminology "roles" or "identities". Since we use a Cyrus server with a lot of shared folders, I'm thinking it'd be rather handy to be able to "tie" such a role to a folder, making that role the default when in that folder.

Anyway, here's some notes on a possible UBCWEBMAIL_ACCOUNTS table to support this stuff:

Column

Description

USER_ID

Obvious what this is for....

FULL_NAME

In an address like "Amos Gouaux" <amos@utdallas.edu>, this field would be what's in between the double quotes above.

FROM_ADDR

In the same example address above, this would be the portion in between the angle brackets. This could vary to something else, like <jasig-portal@utdallas.edu>. This would be used to set both the From: message header and the envelope sender (the real sender of the message.)

EMAIL_ADDR

This would be USER_ID + @ + CURRENT_IMAP_SERVER. Perhaps the name of this field is too vague, but it represents the user's account. So for all my identities, for me this would always be <amos@inbox.utdallas.edu>. When FROM_ADDR was set to something other than <amos@DEFAULT_DOMAIN>, then this value should be used to set a X-Sender message header that would be added to the message.

REPLY_TO

This would be used to add a Reply-To message header, if it is defined.

SIGNATURE

This message signature we'd like associated with this identity.

ASSOC_FOLDER

This would probably be of more benefit to environments with shared IMAP folders, but generally would be null. The idea is this: if this value is set, it would be set to the shared folder. Consequently, when this shared folder was open, this particular account would show up as the default in a pick list that appears where the sender's name is currently displayed when composing a message. Typically the default for this pick list would be the user's primary account (maybe we need a flag for that?), but when we were in this folder, this account would instead be the default.
An example: When I am in Shared_Folders.postmaster, the account I have for postmaster@utdallas.edu would be the default value in the sender pick list when I go to compose a message. So while I was in that folder, I have taken on the role of this account.

If there's only one row in this table for that user, then no sender pick list but, if there's more than one row, the sender pick list would be presented so the user could choose the sender to use when composing a message.