How do I create an email alias address with LDAP routing?

Issue

How do I create an email alias address with LDAP routing?

Solution

An alias is an alternative email address to which an email can be sent. The emails addressed to the alias are delivered to the same mailbox as the primary email address. An alias is assigned as an attribute in LDAP. This article assumes you are already using LDAP routing.

Email address aliasing can be achieved with your LDAP configuration using the maillocaladdress LDAP attribute, or an Administrator-specified attribute.

Implementing aliases is a two step configuration:

1. Assign an alias to the existing email address.
2. Route the email sent to the aliased email address to the original mailbox.

Step 1: Assign an Alias to the Existing Email Address

This can be done using the maillocaladdress attribute on an LDAP server with the Mirapoint schema, or another attribute available in the LDAP server. For example, in the user's LDAP entry, add the following: 

dn: uid=sam1,miDomainName=primary,ou=domains,o=top

objectclass: inetOrgPerson

objectclass: mirapointUser

objectclass: mirapointMailUser

mail: sam@example.com

cn: Sam Test

mailhost: mailstore.example.com

uid: sam1

sn: Test

userpassword:: MTIzNA==

mimailquota: 300000

mimailexpirepolicy: QTNBOX.* 14 I

mailroutingaddress: sam@example.com

maillocaladdress: sam-alias@example.com

maillocaladdress: sam@alternative-domain.org

In this example, the original email address is sam@example.com with mailbox account sam1 in the primary domain. Two aliases (highlighted in bold text within the example) are added. One with a different address before the at-sign (@), the other with an alternative domain name component, where the alias to the email address is san1@trial-dom.com.

Step 2: Configure LDAP Queries to Use the Alias

Now set proper LDAP query to return maillocaladdress when an email is sent to the alias. For example, within the CLI, you would type the following at the prompt:

> LDAP Setquery user:localaddr "" "" maillocaladdress ""

> LDAP Setquery user:publishedname "(|(maillocaladdress=$(login))(your existing search terms))" mail ""

In order to confirm the delivery path of alias emails you can use the following command. For example:

> Smtp Addrtest sam@example.com

mailstore.example.com sam@example.com