- Mail Protocols and Service Overview
- Basic Mail Server Configuration with Server Admin
- Enabling Email Accounts in Workgroup Manager
- Whats Next?
Enabling Email Accounts in Workgroup Manager
Although the mail services can be configured using Server Admin, configuring individual accounts is done using WorkGroup Manager. To configure mail options for a user, launch WorkGroup Manager, authenticate to the appropriate Open Directory domain, and select a user account in the accounts list. In the right pane, select the Mail tab. There are three mail options available: None, Enabled, and Forward. None means just what it says: the account is not mail-enabled. Selecting Forward enables you to enter an email address that is not hosted by your server. Any email sent to the user’s account on your mail server will instead be forwarded to the address you enter. Enabled creates an email account for the user and enables you to configure it.
Once you’ve mail-enabled a user, you will see the fields displayed in Figure 5. The first field enables you to identify the server that will be hosting the user’s account (that is, the mail server you configured earlier). You can enter the server using its IP address or fully qualified domain name. The next option is the user’s mailbox quota in megabytes. The third option shows whether the user will be able to access their email using POP, IMAP, or both. The final option is to use an alternate location or partition to store email. This last option requires that you have configured the mail server to use alternate storage locations using the Database portion of the Advanced Settings tab in Server Admin (again we’ll cover this in more detail in part 3 of the series. After you’ve entered the appropriate information and saved the user’s account, they should be able to send a receive email using the account.
Figure 5 Mail options for a user in WorkGroup Manager
You can mail-enable users in both shared and standalone Open Directory domains. You can also create mail-enabled accounts with the Access Account option deselected on the Basic tab in WorkGroup Manager. This will create an account that can be used solely for email purposes. Also, be aware that mail-enabling an account does not populate a user’s email address on the Info tab in WorkGroup Manager. Finally, you may notice that a user’s email account is not listed in the Mail service’s Maintenance pane in Server Admin after you create an email account in WorkGroup Manager. This is because a user’s email account isn’t actually created until either they receive an email or they check their email for the first time.