XCLN: How to Enable Different Reply Addresses Based on a Sender Address

This article describes how to configure mailboxes in Exchange Server 5.5 so that you can reply to a message using a different sender address.

If an organization hosts multiple Web sites for its customers, and the Web sites are hosted on an Internet Service Provider (ISP), users who access these Web sites are able to send questions or feedback to different departments of this organization. These messages are received at the ISP's mail server and then downloaded to Exchange Server by using suitable POP3 connector software. You can configure Exchange Server to display a different From address on the message reply, for example, the department's address, and not the organization's address.

One way to configure a different From address is to use a set of different mailboxes (each with their own associated Microsoft Windows NT user accounts). Set the SMTP addresses of these mailboxes, for example, Sales@Website1.com and Support@Website2.com, and give the appropriate users Send on Behalf Of rights over these mailboxes. When you want to reply to a message, click the Reply button, on the View menu, click From Field, enter the appropriate mailbox from the global address list, and then click Send. This procedure enters the SMTP address of the selected mailbox, for example Proxyaddress, into the From box, so that the recipient sees Sales@Website1.com and Support@Website2.com in the From box. This approach may not work if an employee enters an incorrect proxy address from the global address list when they attempt to populate the From box in the Reply form.

A better solution is to use separate Recipients containers for each Web site, and create suitable mailboxes under these Recipients containers. Assign appropriate proxy addresses for each of these mailboxes, and then give the appropriate users Send on Behalf Of rights over these mailboxes. Now, when an employee opens a message sent to Sales@Website1.com, clicks the Reply button, and then on the View menu, clicks From Field, the employee can enter the proxy addresses from the appropriately named Recipients container which houses these mailboxes. As long as the Recipients containers are suitably named, and as long as the mailboxes in these Recipients containers have sensible display names, the employees can enter the correct proxy address more easily than when they use the global address list.

The following procedure is an example of how to implement the preceding solution. For this example, six Web sites are hosted by the company and are named Website1 through Website6.

1. Start the Exchange Administrator program, and create six Recipients containers under the site object named Website1, Website2, Website3, Website4, Website5, Website6. Assume that there are two e-mail accounts for each Web site named Sales@WebsiteX.com and Sales@WebsiteX, where X ranges from 1 to 6.
2. Create Windows NT user accounts for each mailbox for each Recipients container for a total of twelve Windows NT user accounts. An example of the naming convention for these Windows NT accounts is SalesWS1, SupportWS1, SalesWS2, SupportWS2, and so on, where WS1 and WS2 stand for Website1 and Website2, respectively.
3. Create two mailboxes for each Recipients container that is associated with the Windows NT accounts created in step four.
   
   Sample names for these mailboxes:
   

   Windows NT User Account   Exchange Alias Name      Display Name
   =======================   ===================      ============
   SALESWS1                  SALESWS1                 Sales at Website1
   SUPPORTWS1                SUPPORTWS1               Support at Website1
   SALESWS2                  SALESWS2                 Sales at Website2

4. Open the Properties page of these newly created mailboxes and click the Delivery Options tab. Give Send on Behalf Of rights to all users who send messages on behalf of this mailbox.
   
   NOTE: You also give Send As permissions by clicking the Permissions tab. The difference is that when you give Send on Behalf Of rights, when an internal recipient receives the message, the From box is displayed as "user1 on behalf of user2". If you give Send As permissions, this text is not displayed.

When this procedure is complete, when you open a message sent to Sales@Website1.com, and reply to it, when you click the Reply button, and then on the View menu, click From Field, when you click the From button, a Choose Sender dialog box is displayed. You can then choose names from the global address list and various Recipients containers. By default, the Show names from the list box lists the global address list first. When you open the list box, a list of containers is displayed, and you can enter the user from this list. This list contains the Recipients containers that have been defined. When you click the appropriate Recipients container, the corresponding names in that Recipients container are displayed. When you click the appropriate user and then click OK, the user name is entered in the From box of the Reply form.