Email Address Standardization

1
Email Address Standardization

• Tony Brett
• IT Support Staff Services
• OUCS

2
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

3
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

4
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

5
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 whats 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_at_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

6
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

7
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)

8
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 cant 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

9
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

10
Questions