How to list external accounts?

[LHammonds]

How do I include a particular person in our global address book that is nothing but a placeholder for their external email address?

For example, I want John Doe to show up as someone we can pick from our global address list as well as being able to include inside distribution lists...but their mailbox is hosted elsewhere...such as JohnDoe@gmail.com.

In MS Exchange, we have external contacts where the email address is SMTP:JohnDoe@gmail.com and they look a bit different so we can tell this is an external address...but their email is not stored here...it is just a placeholder to allow us to find and communicate to them.

EDIT: Solution - Add a distribution list for each external contact.

Example:

external-john-doe@mydomain.com (contains johndoe@gmail.com) (can receive email enabled)
external-jan-doe@mydomain.com (contains jandoe@yahoo.com) (can receive email enabled)
external-dirk-diggler@mydomain.com (contains ddiggler@hotmail.com) (can receive email enabled)

Thanks,
LHammonds

[ccelis5215]

Hi,

Looking a similar approach to make GAL a global company address book. No luck, just found this.

[SOLVED] New to Zimbra - Master Address Books ?

ccelis.

[LHammonds]

Ouch. That seems to have complicated things. No wonder I was having a difficult time trying to figure out how to get an external contact listed.

Thanks for the link.

[liverpoolfcfan]

If you are not talking about a huge number of them - then perhaps you could set up a distribution list for each ?

For example
Distribution list: JohnDoeEXTERNAL@mydomain.com
Members: john.doe@somewhereelse.com

You must check the option for [X] Can receive email

[LHammonds]

If you are not talking about a huge number of them - then perhaps you could set up a distribution list for each ?

Well that certainly works better than the solution I was about to go with. I confirmed that this process does indeed work. Thanks!

Setting up a dedicated LDAP server just for listing external contacts wasn't going to happen.

I was going to create a mailbox called "external" and then share out the contact folder which would contain the external mail accounts. I did not know how to get that list to show up for everyone automatically though.

LHammonds

[ccelis5215]

Thank's liverpoolfcfan and lhammonds, you are smart people!

I'm just one of a kind.

ccelis

PS: liverpoolcfan.. amazing work supporting Z-Push!