Managing Mailbox Features

When an account is provisioned, you create the email mailbox, assign the email address and configure how users access and use their mailboxes. This chapter describes the features, advanced controls, and user preferences that can be configured for an account either by assigning a COS or by specifying the feature when you create the account.

When accounts are created from the administration console, the New Account Wizard enables most of the features available to that account. The account creation utility creates the appropriate entries on the zimbra LDAP directory server. The mailbox is created on the Zimbra server upon the user’s first log in to the system.

User Mailbox Features

The COS assigned to an account sets the default features for the account. These defaults can be changed for individual accounts. The following table lists the features that can be configured either by COS or by account. If the feature is not enabled, it does not display in the Zimbra Web Client.

Note: Mailbox features are enabled for the Zimbra Web Client users. When IMAP or POP clients are used, users may not have these features available.

Table 3 Configurable Mailbox Features
Feature Name
COS
Account
Description

Contacts

X

X

Lets users create their own personal address book. The maximum number of contacts an account can have can be set in the advanced options.

Calendar
X
X
A calendar and scheduling tool to let users maintain their calendar, schedule meetings, delegate access to their calendar, create multiple personal calendars, and more.
Tagging
X
X
Tags allows users to create labels and assign them to messages.
Advanced search
X
X
Advanced search allows users to build a complex search using email by date, domain, flag, object, size, attachment, and folder.
Saved searches
X
X
Saved searches allows users to save a search that they have previously executed or built.
Conversations
X
X
Messages can be displayed grouped into conversations or as a message list. Conversations group messages by subject. If this feature is turned on, it is the default.
Change password
X
X
Change password allows users to change their password at any time.
Initial search preference
X
X
Users can specify a search to execute when they log in.
User-defined mail filters
X
X
Allows users to create rules for managing their email. Rules can include routing mail to different folders.
GAL access
X
X
GAL access allows users to access the company directory.
HTML compose
X
X
Allows the user to use HTML markup to compose messages that can contain different fonts, colors, and style.
IMAP access
X
X
Enables users to use third party mail applications, such as Thunderbird or Outlook, to access their mailbox using the IMAP protocol.
POP3 access
X
X
Enables users to use third party mail applications, such as Thunderbird or Outlook, to access their mailbox using the POP protocol.
View attachments as HTML
X
X
Enables users to select to view attachments in HTML (Network Edition only)

Advanced Options

Advanced options that can be set at both the COS and account level are described in the table that follows.

Table 4 Configurable Advanced Options
Advanced Options
COS
Account
Description
Disable attachment viewing from web mail UI
X
X
Users cannot view attachments to their messages. If this feature is enabled in Global Settings, it overrides the COS and individual account settings.
Convert attachments to HTML for viewing
X
X
Attachments are converted to HTML. If the Viewing attachments as HTML feature is enabled also, users can select to view attachments in HTML. (Network Edition only)
Account quota
X
X
Mailbox size limit in MB. The default is not to set a mailbox quota, which makes the quote unlimited.
Address book size limit
X
X
Maximum number of contacts a user can have in their personal Contacts list.
Minimum/Maximum password length
X
X
Specifies the required length of a password.
Minimum /Maximum password age
X
X
Number of days that a password must remain unchanged before a user can change the password, or the number of days that can elapse before a user is forced to change his password.
Enforce password history
X
X
Number of times a user can change his password before he can reuse an old password.
Password locked
X
X
Users cannot change their passwords.
Email message lifetime
X
X
Number of days a message can remain in any folder before it is automatically purged.
Trashed message lifetime
X
X
Number of days a message remains in the Trash folder before it is automatically purged.
Spam message lifetime
X
X
Number of days a message can remain in the Junk folders, before it is automatically purged.
Session token lifetime
X
X
Session token lifetime sets how long a user session remains active, if no activity occurs. Activity includes any clickable mouse action, such as viewing contents of a folder or clicking a button. The default is 2 days.
Must change password
X
When a user logs in for the first time, he is required to change his password.
Administrator
X
In the General Information section, is the option to enable the account to be an administrator account and allows the user to log in to the administration console.
Domain Administrator
X
In the General Information section for Accounts is the option to enable the account to be a Domain Administrator account (Network Edition only).

Preferences

How user mailboxes display and behave when a message is composed or received is controlled by preferences that can be configured in the COS and in account configuration. If the preference is set for the account, the user can change it from the Options application on the Web client.

The preferences are listed in the following table.

Table 5 Configurable Preferences
Preferences
COS
Account
Save to Sent
X
X
View mail as HTML
X
X
Always compose in new window
X
X
Reply/Forward using format of the original messages
X
X
Always compose mail using either text or HTML Default is text.
X
X
Signature style, use a separator between message or not. Default is to not separate the signature.
X
X
Enable automatic adding of contacts
X
X
Contacts per page
X
X
Number of items to display per page
X
X
Initial mail search
X
X
Show search string
X
X
Group mail by conversations
X
X
Enable address for new mail notification and add address
X
Enable mail signature
X
Show time-zone list in appointment view
X
X
Show IMAP search folders
X
X

Additional Account Options

Email Aliases

An alias is an email address that redirects all email it receives to another email account. It is not an email account. An unlimited number of email aliases can be created for an account. Email sent to an alias address is automatically forwarded to the user’s account.

Email Forwarding

When setting up an account, you can enable the account to allow users to specify a forwarding address, specify a forwarding address for the user’s account and specify a forwarding address that is hidden from the user. A copy of each message sent to the account is immediately forwarded to the designated forwarding address.

Displaying HTML in an Email

(Network Edition only)

You can determine whether or not the account can view the HTML formatting of messages that contain such formatting. The HTML version may look nicer than plain text, but you may not want to display inline images as part of the message.

An image can be a hypertext reference (HREF) linking to a site, rather than a local file attachment. If the user opens the message, a spammer can tell that an email address is valid by tracking image downloads from the referenced web site.

Users Preferences

End-users can further customize their mailboxes when they log in to the Zimbra Web Client. The options they modify overrule the account and COS preference settings. The preferences include a General tab, Mail tab, Mail Filters tab, Contacts tab, and a Calendar tab. Only those features that are enabled are shown in the user’s Options.

General

Users can:

Change their passwords
Select whether to include Junk and Trash folders in their search folders
Select to always show the search string in the search field
Set the default font settings

Note: If Microsoft Active Directory is used for user authentication instead of the Zimbra LDAP, you must disable the user’s Change Password feature in their Class of Service. In that case, the Change password option is not displayed.

Mail

Users can define the following features for their mailbox’s behavior:

Default view to use (conversations or mail messages)
The number of items to display on a page
How often, in minutes, that the Web Client checks for new messages
Whether to save copies of outbound messages to the Sent folder
Reply-to address
Reply and forwarding preferences; whether to include original text, and if so, as inline text or as a separate attachment
Set an address to forward mail and enable to have the copy of the forwarded mail deleted from their mailbox.
Whether to automatically append a signature to outgoing messages and what the text should be
Enable a vacation/out of office message and what the text should be
Whether to generate new mail notifications and if so, to which email address notifications should be sent
Whether to view mail as HTML for messages that include HTML, default is to display messages as plain text
Whether to ignore messages they send that they then receive
Whether to compose mail as HTML or plain text
Whether to compose messages in a separate window

Mail Filter Rules

Users can define a set of rules and corresponding actions to apply to incoming mail. When an incoming mail message matches the conditions of a filter rule, the corresponding actions associated with that rules are applied.

Contacts

Users can configure the following contact behavior:

Whether to automatically add a contact from a recipient of a message the user has sent
Which view to view their contacts in, list or as cards
How many contacts to show on a single page
Import a contact list or export their contact list to a csv text file.

Calendar

Users can set the following:

Which calendar view they want to see when they open their calendar; Day, Work Week, 7-Day Week, Month, or Schedule.
Which day of the week is the first day to display in the calendars.
Select to display the time-zone list in their appointment dialog, giving them the opportunity to change time zones while making appointments.
Whether to use the QuickAdd dialog to create appointments from the calendar pane.
Whether the mini-navigation calendar always displays in the Mail view. The mini-calendar automatically displays in the Calendar view.
Select when to be reminded of an appointment. The default is 5 minutes before the appointment.
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