Email Address Standardization: Email Address Standardization Tony Brett IT Support Staff Services OUCS


Overview: Overview What exactly are we doing? Why are we doing this? When are we doing it? What implications will the changes have? More information Questions


What are we doing? (in order): What are we doing? (in order) Discontinue hybrid forms Mail from outside ox.ac.uk Mail from inside ox.ac.uk Stop rewriting outgoing headers Remove long/short distinction Move to one form per unit (usually the current short form) ALL will end ox.ac.uk and oxford.ac.uk will be deprecated Stop creating alternative forms for new accounts Withdraw support for alternative forms People can still have more than one affiliation


Why are we doing this?: Why are we doing this? Having two forms is a confusing historical anomaly Most prefer the short form Accepted terminology will be the 'standard' form Rewriting outgoing mail to different form causes problems with maillist.ox.ac.uk and similar Virtually no other UK HE Institutions use alternative forms for E-mail Multiple forms make mail routing and configuration much more complex


When are we doing it?: When are we doing it? 30th Apr 2005 Deadline for departments to choose standard mail domain name default position is current default mail domain (not always short form e.g. math.ox vs.maths.oxford requires a change to maths.ox). unit.oxford.ac.uk will not be an option! Depending on what’s commonly in use now, some units will see little change, some will see more Units ideally to have this the same as their web address. e.g. www.oucs.ox.ac.uk and tony.brett@oucs.ox.ac.uk 2nd Aug 2005 Stop receiving mail to hybrid forms such as computing-services.ox.ac.uk or oucs.oxford.ac.uk Stop creating alternative forms (generally long) for new users


When are we doing it?: When are we doing it? 3rd Jan 2009 Stop receiving mail to non-standard (generally long form) addresses End of oxford.ac.uk validity in E-mail Stop rewriting outgoing mail sender addresses Users will be able to make either or both of the above changes for their own address(es) from 2nd Aug 2005 – the change will be imposed for all on 3rd Jan 2009 This will be available through online self-reg


Notes: Notes From October 2008 start nagging users who have not made optional changes Intention to force the change on as few users as possible in Jan 2009 From May 2005 Webmail will allow users to specify their sender address (like most mail clients)


What are the Implications?: What are the Implications? Emailing lists Depend on sending 'from' a given address Depend receiving at a given address Users need ability to update subscription addresses on mailing lists We can’t do this on external mailing list servers Other people How do people make others update their address books? What about addresses in publications etc. ? Need to get new stationery


More information: More information http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/email/addresses/ http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/email/addresses/itss.xml http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/its3/resources/longshort.pdf http://long-short.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ https://register.oucs.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/diagonalley/emailform


Questions: Questions