[Kroupware] Distribution lists

[Andreas Jellinghaus]

Hi.

Everyone knows /etc/aliases:
alias: dest1,dest2,dest3

I got a dump/export from an exchange 5.5 server (to be replaced) as csv
file. there is see:
 - types: dl for distribution list, mailbox for real users, and remote
   for external contacts.

a column called "Member" holds membership lists:
for the distribution lists, all the members of the list.
for the mailboxes and remote/contacts, the lists this item is a member
in.

i have to admit: for an user or admin troubleshooting in the gui world,
that is nice: if you have a mail and wonder where it came from, you
can see all distribution lists you are in. and for a dl, you can
see al people in that list.

also a gui can resolve the uniq identifier to a full name/link to that
person, which is less cryptical than seeing plain email addresses.

So, i wonder how we should do this?

the straightforward alias replacement is a normal object with
mailacceptinggeneralid: alias1
maildrop: email1

both maildrop and mailacceptinggeneralid can have any number of
entries. such one object can have several names, and can of course
distribute mail to several people.

however since the email addresses are used in the maildrop: attribute,
the whole thing gets quite dirty. well, those who actualy use
firstname.lastname@company.de are fine, but those who started with
short fn1@company.de and only added longer names as aliases will see
a quite confusing schema.

and once the alias contains both, local and remote email addresses, it
realy is a big mess to manage, mostly because many people forget email
addresses: they have the contact name in their outlook/whatever and
don't need to know the details/email address. much as i stopped knowing
anyones telephone number, when i could simply pick the name in my mobile
phone.

so, i wonder if there is any way we can create a nicer, easier to
understand and manage distribution list / alias system. users will want
that, not a email address based system. 

any idea for a nicer design than the maildrop/acceptinggeneralid based
system? or how we can hide the ugly details in a nice gui?

andreas