InformationWeek

October 12, 1998

Net Mail Scales Up

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Also, make sure the mail server supports adequate mailing-list management. Consider a flat-text alias file, such as the /etc/ aliases on Unix-based Sendmail MTAs, as the bare minimum. Though full-fledged listserv support can be considered a different product category, some sort of easy-to-use mailing-list management tool can make life easier if your organization supports multiple mailing lists. Ideally, the mail server should allow delegated management of mailing lists to individual list managers, as opposed to focusing all the responsibility on the system manager. More advanced servers may also offer specific mailing-list management functions such as autodigests, which link together a predefined volume of messages to a mailing list into a single message to help reduce the clutter of messages in traditional mailing lists.

In addition to supporting standard mailing lists, IMAP-standard products such as Isocor's N-Plex offer the ability to share a single folder among multiple users, rather than distributing a copy of a message to each participant's private mailbox. If you're looking for a rudimentary groupware solution, consider the ability to manage shared access to IMAP folders as a possible alternative to running a news server or a standard listserv or mailing list.

IMAP Clients
The debate over the choice of desktop mail client is as heated as the argument over the choice of operating system. Luckily, because IMAP4, POP3, and SMTP are standard protocols, an Internet mail server should support any number of varying clients. In terms of protocol support, mail clients, like servers, should offer support for POP3 and IMAP4. Both are standard protocols and should be supported ubiquitously on today's desktop open-mail clients. In addition, many desktop mail clients also support Usenet news groups via the Network News Transfer Protocol.

At present, desktop Internet mail clients are enough of a commodity that many are available free to almost all desktop users--either bundled with desktop operating systems or Internet browser suites or from other readily available sources. However, some low-end clients may lack valuable message management, security, and directory-access features valuable to enterprise users.

Though IMAP-standard servers support antispam features, your IMAP mail clients should also support some type of automatic message filtering. The capabilities range from simple text matching to more advanced pattern matching, but the mail client should at least automate simple tasks. These include placing listserv messages into an appropriate subfolder or marking particular messages as urgent--or even automatically deleting messages matching certain user-defined parameters. In addition, support for managing local and remote message folders via IMAP should include effective search utilities and the ability to sort messages by thread.

There are also IMAP-specific features to look for on the client side. Make sure clients have the ability to support server-side searching, access-control list management for easily granting other users access to shared folders, and subscription to other shared folders.

Desktop mail clients should support a local address book of commonly used E-mail addresses and remote directories via an LDAP connection. Ideally, you should have the option of performing automatic directory look-up operations on unknown addresses.

The bigger your organization, the more important remote configuration is. Some clients allow administrators to lock in default configuration values. Likewise, if you plan to implement Application Configuration Access Protocol, check for support in the client.

Finally, as the standards-based mail market sets its sights on proprietary groupware products, additional de facto standard features are cropping up. The state of the art in standards-based messaging includes support for rich-text (HTML-encoded) messages, Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions-encoded message attachments, and public-key message-security protocols.

Dan Backman is a technology editor at Network Computing magazine. He can be reached at dbackman@nwc.com. Jeff Angus is a senior technology editor at InformationWeek.

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Read sidebar stories, "IMAP Searches For Its Place" and "An On-The-Road Protocol."