Index:
The purpose of this memo is to explain the name-based scheme for addressing electronic mail (Email) at Monash University. A Name-based Email Address is of the form:
First.Middle.Last@Group.monash.edu.au
This scheme should help people: find out or guess someone's email address, recognise who sent you a piece of email, hide long complicated email addresses like those gatewayed from Banyan systems, and insulate people from changes in host computer or account names.
This scheme applies to staff in all faculties and units who wish to take advantage of it, and could possibly extend it to cover students as well.
At Monash University, there are many different forms of email address. There are several different groups of people at Monash that each manage their own email addressing schemes without necessarily co-ordinating with other groups.
Email addresses usually have in them a computer usercode and a host
computer name, i.e. usercode@host.dept.monash.edu.au .
The usercode part of an email address may be a Computer Centre account
code "COS142D", the person's first name
"JOHN", initials "jam", first initial
followed by surname "JMANN", derived from their id. number
"A1590114" or where they live "ROSCHEUNG",
...
The dept part of the host computer name relates to who owns the
computer, not the part of the university the computer user works for.
The computer usercode or host computer where a person wishes to have their email delivered to may change over time, making email addresses in mailing lists or printed on business cards etc. out of date.
It is currently almost impossible to guess someone's email address, and there is no organised scheme for looking it up or finding it out.
In this scheme, a person has a Name-based Email Address of the form:
First.Middle.Last@Group.monash.edu.au
Periods "." are used to separate the parts of a person's name.
The First, Middle and Last fields are the person's first, middle and last names. People with not-too-common European-style names will normally omit the Middle field, i.e.
First.Last@Group.monash.edu.au
The Group field is an short form of the person's faculty or unit name, as per the list in Supported Faculty and Unit Group Names. This field will help distinguish between multiple people at Monash having the same first and last names.
The Last field is mandatory. The Middle, First and Group fields are optional but need to be specified to get a consistent naming scheme and to make Name-based Email Addresses unique.
Incoming mail messages will go to the PMDF mail software on
vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au .
An add-on to PMDF called Name Router will attempt to translate the
incoming email address according to the entries in its database.
The incoming email address is broken up into fields using periods
"." as separators. Underscores "_" and
equals signs "=" will also be treated as periods to help
transition to this new addressing scheme.
The last name field of an incoming email address has to exactly match the last name field in the Name Router database --- it cannot be abbreviated or omitted.
The Group field of an incoming email address can be omitted, and the Middle and First fields can be abbreviated or omitted as long as the incoming email address doesn't match more than one person.
There is currently no provision for approximate matching.
If the address on the incoming mail un-ambiguously matches one person's Name-based Email Address, the mail will be forwarded to their physical mailbox address.
If the address on the incoming mail doesn't match anyone, or matches more than one person, the Name Router will send back a list of people matched and an explanatory error message:
Cannot route mail to the following:
Mann@monash.edu.au (Ambiguous name)
-------------------
One of the following names may be the person you want:
JOHN.MANN@CC.MONASH.EDU.AU
KENNETH.MANN@MATHS.MONASH.EDU.AU
-------------------
To use the Name Router to guess the Email address of a *Staff* member,
send to
First.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au
or First.Middle.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au
The Lastname field *must* match that of the Staff member.
The list of supported Group fields is currently
Adm, Arts, BusEco, CC, DEC, EdServ, Education, Eng, FCIT, GAdm
General, HEARU, Law, Lib, Med, Nursing, Sci, and VCP
( Maths and Physics are now in Sci; EcoCom and SymeBus are now in
BusEco )
The Group field can be omitted to search all these Staff groups.
The First and Middle name fields can also be abbreviated or omitted as
long
as the resulting email address is not ambiguous.
If this fails, then you can ask postmaster@<Group>monash.edu.au or
postmaster@monash.edu.au if the person has an Email address.
To send Email to a *Student* send to <usercode>student.monash.edu.au
To send Email to a someone not registered with the Name Router, you have
to send to their full usercode@host.dept.monash.edu.au mailbox
address.
This was an automated message from the Mail System.
Please report problems to helpdesk@monash.edu.au
If outgoing email goes through VAXC, then PMDF will also replace the sender's mailbox address on outgoing email by their corresponding Name-based Email Address.
Having outgoing email use your Name-based Email Address will encourage people who send email to you and mailing list maintainers to record your Name-based Email Address rather than a physical mailbox address (which might change).
(Unfortunately, having a Name-based Email Address as the sender's address on outgoing email will make it harder for you to un-subscribe your old mailbox address from automatic LISTSERV mailing lists.)
There are several pieces of information about a person that can be put into the mail routing system to tell it what are valid Name-based Email Addresses, and where to send the email:
The Person's Name and Person's Group are used to construct their Name-based Email Address. A person can have only one Name-based Email Address --- but can have one or more additional aliases.
Since we don't have a good database containing useful contact information for people at Monash, we will create our own, as an interim step until a full Directory is available.
The Name Router database input file is a flat ASCII file.
Blank lines are ignored, as are any lines beginning with a comment
delimiter "!".
A file may be included in the current file by having a line starting
with an "@" character and followed by the name of the file.
Fields are separated by blanks or tabs. The order of fields the input file and their maximum width is:
First Middle Last Group Mailbox 16 16 30 30 80To indicate that an entry doesn't have a First, Middle or Group field, use a period "
." for that field.Normal entries:
Bob . Smith eng bsmith@eng1.eng.monash.edu.au Bill . Smith lib bills@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Loh Su Yin fcit lsy@bruce.cs.monash.edu.auNote: The Mailbox field must be the full mailbox address in order for outgoing address translation to work. Therefore Banyan addresses must be entered as e.g.
Joe . Brown adm Joe=Brown%CIS%Monash@banyan.cc.monash.edu.auPerson's and Group Name alias entries have a "
>" in
the first column to indicate that they are only used for incoming
address translation.
>Robert . Smith eng bsmith@eng1.eng.monash.edu.au >Loh Su Yin sd lsy@bruce.cs.monash.edu.auMailing list names and single-word aliases are put in the Last field with periods for the First and Middle fields. Single-word aliases also have a "
>" in the first column.
. . pmdf-l cc pmdf-l@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au >. . smithy eng bsmith@basil.eng.monash.edu.auSecondary mailbox entries have a "
<" in the first
column to indicate that they are only used for outgoing address
translation, and have the same name and group fields as the person's
normal Name-based Email Address entry:
<Bob . Smith eng bsmith@basil.eng.monash.edu.au
A more complicated example of a professor (Greg Brown) who wants all their Email to go to their secretary (Gwen Jones) might be:
Greg . Brown eng Secretary.Greg.Brown@eng.monash.edu.au Gwen . Jones eng gwen@basil.eng.monash.edu.au >Secretary Greg Brown eng gwen@basil.eng.monash.edu.au
Some slight changes are required to some people's names so that they fit this scheme. The currently recommended changes are:
van Jacobson -> vanJacobson O'Brien -> OBrien
Smith-Grey -> Smith-Grey
We have extended the database input file format so that these files can also be useful for loading data into other databases, such as Pegasus Mail address books and mailing lists.
The extra text for supplying information to other databases is stored in comment lines.
The format of comment lines that are relevant to Pegasus Mail address books are as follows:
! <keyword> <value1> <value2>
The allowed values of <keyword> are:
>"
and secondary mailbox entries that start with a "<"
are not included.
The values of <value1> and <value2> can be any printable string where the tilde (~) is replaced by a single space character.
For example the top of the CC.TXT file looks like...
! Dept: CC Computer Centre ! Street: Mail Distribution List ! . . aarnet-contact cc aarnet-contact@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au ! Postal: Domain Name Service requests . . dns-request cc dns-request@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au ! Postal: Users informed of downtime . . downtime-l cc downtime@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au ! Postal:
An example much further down in the CC.TXT file looks as follows...
! Street: Clayton ! Fax: 54746 ! Postal: M28-216 ! Notes: Policy~and~Planning,~Micros~Team Stephen . Dart cc steved@its-clay-cc.cc.monash.edu.au >Steven . Dart cc steved@its-clay-cc.cc.monash.edu.au >Steve . Dart cc steved@its-clay-cc.cc.monash.edu.au >. . steved cc steved@its-clay-cc.cc.monash.edu.au ! Postal: ! Notes:
You will notice that the Pegasus fields of Key: and Phone: are not included here. The Key: field is an 11 character field and is derived from the person's name and University Department using the family name, appending the first initial and adding the department code. The Phone: field is derived from the telephone directory if and only if an exact match on the first and last names can be found. If more than one exact match is found and the entries have different phone numbers, it is reported as multiple entries.
The format of comment lines that are relevant to mailing lists is:
! Lists: <listname>, ...
<listname>, ... is a comma-separated list of
lists that the following Name Router entries should be added to.
The Lists: keyword must be set to the desired listnames prior to the users
entry in the Name Router file and reset to nothing if not required for
subsequent user entries. Only normal entries are included in the
lists, e.g. alias entries that start with a ">"
and secondary mailbox entries that start with a "<"
are not included.
Once a Name Router list is created and populated with entries, it is still necessary to have this list specified as a Mailing list rather than a permissions list or whatever. Send a message to mailto:listmanager@cc.monash.edu.au telling them the list name, and any special attributes required.
As an example one person's Name Router entry looks like:
! Street: Clayton ! Fax: 52779 ! Postal: 405 ! Notes: Associate Dean Research ! Lists: sgsstaff-l, sgsacademic-l, sgsgroup4-l, sgsmale-l Dick . Gunstone Education Dick-G@edus2.educ.monash.edu.au >Richard . Gunstone Education Dick-G@edus2.educ.monash.edu.auThis means that
Dick.Gunstone@Education.monash.edu.au
will be put in the automatically maintained sgsstaff-l, sgsacademic-l,
sgsgroup4-l, and sgsmale-l mailing lists.
Taking some of the database records given above as an example database:
Bob . Smith eng bsmith@eng1.eng.monash.edu.au >Robert . Smith eng bsmith@eng1.eng.monash.edu.au <Bob . Smith eng bsmith@basil.eng.monash.edu.au Bill . Smith lib bills@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au
Mail sent to B.Smith@monash.edu.au will be rejected as
ambiguous (Bob.Smith@eng.monash.edu.au and
Bill.Smith@lib.monash.edu.au).
Mail sent to B.Smith@eng.monash.edu.au will be forwarded to
bsmith@eng1.eng.monash.edu.au .
If email is sent from either bsmith@eng1.eng.monash.edu.au or
bsmith@basil.eng.monash.edu.au then the sender's address will be
rewritten as Bob.Smith@eng.monash.edu.au
Initially, the staff mail tables will have to be maintained manually. Someone will need to add and remove staff from the tables when they join or leave a faculty or unit. They will also need to keep up to date the information about the person's aliases (if any), preferred mailbox and secondary mailboxes.
I propose that one person be nominated to look after all the people in a mail Group.
I further propose that these nominated people have an account on VAXC and provide their mail tables in one of their own directories on VAXC. The location of these files will need to be added to the Name Router configuration.
To integrate a new version of their mail table into the Name Router database, the maintainer should execute the command:
$ @SYS_PACKAGES:REBUILDNAMESThey will receive mail back with the log from the rebuild. Please check such messages for errors in case you have introduced any errors, or are now duplicating information that someone else provided.
Automatic Name Router rebuilds are also initiated once per hour between 8 am and 8 pm. Automatic list rebuilds are performed once a day at 5 pm.
Name Router database maintainers should also insert a line into their
LOGIN.COM to define the Name Router commands:
$ @NAME_ROUTER:NRLOGINand then executing
$ @LOGIN.COM.
They can then run NRTEST,
for example to check various ways of addressing email to me:
$ nrtest Address: john.mann@monash.edu.au johnm@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Address: mann@monash.edu.au Ambiguous Address, choices are: JOHN.MANN@CC.MONASH.EDU.AU KENNETH.MANN@MATHS.MONASH.EDU.AU Address: mann@cc.monash.edu.au johnm@vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au Address:
This is the list of Group names currently supported. If you wish to add to or change any of these, please let me know.
<null> -- i.e. name@monash.edu.au to search all Groups Adm University Administration Arts Arts Faculty BusEco Business and Economics Faculty CC Computer Centre DEC Distance Education Centre Education Education Faculty EdServ Education Services Eng Engineering Faculty FCIT Computing and Information Technology Faculty GAdm Gippsland Administration General other people HEARU Higher Education Research Unit Lib Library Law Law Faculty Med Medicine Faculty Nursing Sub-faculty of Nursing Sci Science Faculty VCP Victorian College of PharmacyThese are Group Aliases used by relevant people within FCIT:
bs Business Systems Department ct Computer Technology Department is Information Systems Department sd Software Development Department
Mail subdomains not initially supported by this new scheme because these groups have their own local mail addressing scheme:
cops COPS cs Computer Science Department rdt Robotics and Digital Technology Department udev University Development vcp Victorian College of Pharmacy vifp Victorian Institute of Forensic PathologySome other centrally maintained mail subdomains are superceded by this scheme and should be phased out over time:
amis A.M.I.S. dsfb David Syme Faculty of Business maths Mathematics Department physics Physics Department vc Vice-Chancellor's Office
The maths and physics departmental mail
subdomains have been merged into the Sci group, and
EcoCom and SymeBus merged into the
BusEco group.
The subdomains amis and vc
currently directly map to a Banyan group name.
Mail subdomain aliases can be used to ease such changes.