Sharing Mailbox between users using IMAP
Hi list!
I have an account (let's say info@mydomain.com) that should be read
from more people.
These people does NOT have an account on the server.
Currently info@mydomain.com is a forward to their addresses, but of
course this solution has a huge problem: if info@ receives spam that
the server does not recognize, the server forwards spam...
Now I want to solve this problem and I had the idea to change info@
from "forward" to "local account".
Then, I can read the E-Mails via IMAP.
Now the question: if I have 5-6 people accessing the account via IMAP,
has Dovecot (2.2.13 from Debian repositories) problems?
Is there other solution, if the users don't want to have an account on
the server?
Thanks a lot for your suggestion
Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
On 29 Jun 2018, at 09:42, Luca Bertoncello lucabert@lucabert.de wrote:
Hi list!
I have an account (let's say info@mydomain.com) that should be read from more people. These people does NOT have an account on the server. Currently info@mydomain.com is a forward to their addresses, but of course this solution has a huge problem: if info@ receives spam that the server does not recognize, the server forwards spam...
Now I want to solve this problem and I had the idea to change info@ from "forward" to "local account". Then, I can read the E-Mails via IMAP.
Now the question: if I have 5-6 people accessing the account via IMAP, has Dovecot (2.2.13 from Debian repositories) problems?
Is there other solution, if the users don't want to have an account on the server?
Thanks a lot for your suggestion
Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
Emails can only be read if they are authenticated / authorized in someway to access the store. That means you might need to share the info@ credentials with the other people so that they can read it over imap or webmail etc.
Cheers, remko
Zitat von Remko Lodder remko@freebsd.org:
Hi Remko,
Emails can only be read if they are authenticated / authorized in
someway to access the store. That means you might need to share the
info@ credentials with the other people so that they can read it over imap or webmail etc.
That is self-evident and it is not a problem.
I can't understand what you mean... Do you see a problem in that?
Thanks Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
On 29.06.2018 10:53, Luca Bertoncello wrote:
Zitat von Remko Lodder remko@freebsd.org:
Hi Remko,
Emails can only be read if they are authenticated / authorized in someway to access the store. That means you might need to share the info@ credentials with the other people so that they can read it over imap or webmail etc.
That is self-evident and it is not a problem.
I can't understand what you mean... Do you see a problem in that?
Thanks Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
Or you can use shared mailboxes... https://wiki.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes/Shared
Aki
Zitat von Aki Tuomi aki.tuomi@dovecot.fi:
Hello Aki,
Or you can use shared mailboxes... https://wiki.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes/Shared
Understand I right, that in this case, I __NEED__ all users to have an
account on the server?
Thanks Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
In all cases you need an account
On Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 11:15 Luca Bertoncello lucabert@lucabert.de wrote:
Zitat von Aki Tuomi aki.tuomi@dovecot.fi:
Hello Aki,
Or you can use shared mailboxes... https://wiki.dovecot.org/SharedMailboxes/Shared
Understand I right, that in this case, I __NEED__ all users to have an account on the server?
Thanks Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
Zitat von Sec Adm secadm2007@gmail.com:
In all cases you need an account
I mean: if I just want to have info@ on the Server and all users
accessing it via IMAP, I just need __ONE__ account.
If I want to use a shared mailbox, __ALL USERS__ need an account on
the server.
Is it correct?
Thanks Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
Yes
On Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 11:22 Luca Bertoncello lucabert@lucabert.de wrote:
Zitat von Sec Adm secadm2007@gmail.com:
In all cases you need an account
I mean: if I just want to have info@ on the Server and all users accessing it via IMAP, I just need __ONE__ account. If I want to use a shared mailbox, __ALL USERS__ need an account on the server.
Is it correct?
Thanks Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
On 29/06/18 09:53, Luca Bertoncello wrote:
Zitat von Remko Lodder remko@freebsd.org:
Hi Remko,
Emails can only be read if they are authenticated / authorized in someway to access the store. That means you might need to share the info@ credentials with the other people so that they can read it over imap or webmail etc.
That is self-evident and it is not a problem.
I can't understand what you mean... Do you see a problem in that?
I think the question is "is it a problem for multiple clients to access the same account"? (Ignore the part about people.) If so, then, no, this is the same as having my phone, my tablet, my work computer, my home computer, ... all having access to my mail account.
--
Jeff Abrahamson +33 6 24 40 01 57 +44 7920 594 255
Zitat von Jeff Abrahamson jeff@p27.eu:
Hello Jeff,
I think the question is "is it a problem for multiple clients to access the same account"? (Ignore the part about people.) If so, then, no, this is the same as having my phone, my tablet, my work computer, my home computer, ... all having access to my mail account.
I thought so, but I wanted to be sure... ;)
Thanks a lot! Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
You will face additional problems with this approach, the first user who reads a message will mark it as read for consecutive users.
It's better to make a public mailbox for that but that involves more complex setup And dovecot is not so admin friendly on this matter from my experience so far.
George
On Fri, Jun 29, 2018, 10:59 Luca Bertoncello lucabert@lucabert.de wrote:
Zitat von Remko Lodder remko@freebsd.org:
Hi Remko,
Emails can only be read if they are authenticated / authorized in someway to access the store. That means you might need to share the info@ credentials with the other people so that they can read it over imap or webmail etc.
That is self-evident and it is not a problem.
I can't understand what you mean... Do you see a problem in that?
Thanks Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
Zitat von Sec Adm secadm2007@gmail.com:
You will face additional problems with this approach, the first user who reads a message will mark it as read for consecutive users.
That is NOT a problem, but in this case the wanted behaviour...
Regards Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
Sharing IMAP accounts poses no technical problems, we do that all the time. It might pose GDPR / confidentiality problems however, depending on the type of mails in the account and on the legal situation. JC
Am 29.06.2018 um 09:53 schrieb Luca Bertoncello:
Zitat von Remko Lodder remko@freebsd.org:
Hi Remko,
Emails can only be read if they are authenticated / authorized in someway to access the store. That means you might need to share the info@ credentials with the other people so that they can read it over imap or webmail etc.
That is self-evident and it is not a problem.
I can't understand what you mean... Do you see a problem in that?
Thanks Luca Bertoncello (lucabert@lucabert.de)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On Fri, 29 Jun 2018, Remko Lodder wrote:
On 29 Jun 2018, at 09:42, Luca Bertoncello lucabert@lucabert.de wrote:
Hi list!
I have an account (let's say info@mydomain.com) that should be read from more people. These people does NOT have an account on the server. Currently info@mydomain.com is a forward to their addresses, but of course this solution has a huge problem: if info@ receives spam that the server does not recognize, the server forwards spam...
Now I want to solve this problem and I had the idea to change info@ from "forward" to "local account". Then, I can read the E-Mails via IMAP.
Now the question: if I have 5-6 people accessing the account via IMAP, has Dovecot (2.2.13 from Debian repositories) problems?
Is there other solution, if the users don't want to have an account on the server?
Emails can only be read if they are authenticated / authorized in someway to access the store. That means you might need to share the info@ credentials with the other people so that they can read it over imap or webmail etc.
As Remko points out, you need some sort of authorization to access the messages. The easiest is an account on the server, the messages are located at.
I would suggest one account for the "info" role, that shares its mailboxes to one account per (natural) person. That way, if one person is to deny the access, you do not have to change the password and give it to the other persons.
If you have other ways of authorization, such as: IP address (remote side of connection), think about using those implicit ones.
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On 29 Jun 2018, at 01:42, Luca Bertoncello lucabert@lucabert.de wrote:
Now the question: if I have 5-6 people accessing the account via IMAP, has Dovecot (2.2.13 from Debian repositories) problems?
I routinely access my accounts from 5 devices, which dovecot doesn't know are all "me".
This is rather the point of IMAP.
However, if multiple users are trying to move messages at the same time, that may cause trouble, so shared mailboxes are the best way forward on that.
If this is more than two or three people, or if they are in different locations and will likely be deleting or moving mail at the same time what I would do is share the mailboxes from info@example.com to user1@example.com, user2@example.com, user3@example.com, etc.
For reading and replying there is no issue though.
What I would suggest is that the users have folders on the info account, and when they are processing/dealing with an email, they move it into info/user1.
That said, the right way to do this is to put the email into a CRM database and use a ticket system (or similar) to assign emails to a specific person and not use IMAP at all. Unless you are dealing with a really small pool of people all in one location who can be managed to not muck things up, and even then there might be problems, and they may well be catastrophic.
Something along the lines of Zendesk, Freshdesk, etc (though I make no recommendations). I don't know of any free/open-source CRM packages, but I bet others here do.
-- Penny, I'm a physicist. I have a working knowledge of the entire universe and everything it contains.
participants (8)
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＠lbutlr
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Aki Tuomi
-
Jakob Curdes
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Jeff Abrahamson
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Luca Bertoncello
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Remko Lodder
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Sec Adm
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Steffen Kaiser