Hiding Aliases in 5.0 GA

soxfan · Post by **soxfan** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 11:45 am

I just upgraded my test Zimbra system from 5.0 RC2 to 5.0 GA, and it seems as if an old issue with hiding GAL aliases has resurfaced. It doesn't seem to be happening everywhere, but the specific spot where I am most concerned about it is in doing address auto-complete when typing a name in the "To:" field in the compose new message screen.
I've search around the admin screens, hoping that perhaps a new setting had been introduced and I just needed to adjust it, but so far that does not seem to be the case. Please tell me that I am just missing something. This would be a major stumbling block for me in upgrading my production server to 5.0.
Can anyone else confirm this behavior, or otherwise point me in the right direction for what setting I'm missing?
TIA,

John

14319KevinH · Post by **14319KevinH** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:42 pm

You can hide an entire entry from the GAL but we don't have the ability to only hide certain aliases yet.
Bug 14919 - hide aliases in GAL on a per-alias basis
You can simulate this with creating a 2nd account for the alias's and then hiding the 2nd account from the GAL. The 2nd account would have a forward set to the primary account you want exposed.

soxfan · Post by **soxfan** » Fri Dec 21, 2007 12:52 pm

Thanks Kevin, but I'm more concerned about hiding all aliases. This is the behavior that currently exists in 4.5.x, and it has been this way for a while. I think bug 10456 is the one I'm thinking of, but there may be others. On my 5.0 GA system I'm seeing all aliases.

soxfan · Post by **soxfan** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 8:16 am

Sorry for replying to my own message without any new information, but I just returned to the office this morning after a few days off for Christmas and was disappointed not to find any new responses to this thread. I guess I could take this as a good sign that no one else is experiencing this behavior. The system where I am seeing all the aliases showing up when doing address auto-complete is a test box. This system had a fresh install of 5.0 RC2, which was then upgraded to 5.0 GA. I'm planning on starting from scratch today with a fresh install of 5.0 GA. However, even if this works OK and I don't see the aliases showing up I'll still be a bit hesitant to upgrade my live Zimbra system (4.5.8). I have at least one alias set-up for just about every user and having all these addresses pop-up during address auto-complete would be a fairly major issue. I do have a workaround, in that I could point the GAL to an external LDAP directory that we were using prior to Zimbra, but this is definitely not something I want to do unless absolutely necessary.
Can anyone that has upgraded from 4.5.x to 5.0GA post back with the behavior of aliases on your system; specifically whether or not they are showing up when doing address auto-completion.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
John

mmorse · Post by **mmorse** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 10:33 am

Everything but the regular compose field works as your asking - though actually typing out user1_alias appears as the main account name in pic#7, but I guess if you have a number or something for the username you use canonical instead, and it's probably done that way to satisfy other conditions. (gonna do 2 posts because you can only include 4 pics inline or 5 attached)

Using: test@test.com

Created:

user1@test.com alias user1_alias@test.com

user2@test.com alias user2_alias@test.com

user3@test.com alias user3_alias@test.com
aliasHandelingGALSearch.PNG
aliasHiddenGALAll.PNG
aliasHiddenGALSearch.PNG
aliasShowingCompose.PNG

mmorse · Post by **mmorse** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 10:34 am

More pics of aliases:
aliasHandelingToCompose.PNG
aliasHiddenAttendees.PNG
aliasHiddenContactGroup.PNG
aliasHiddenToCompose.PNG

soxfan · Post by **soxfan** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 11:01 am

Thanks for testing Mike. Unfortunately you basically confirmed what I am seeing, and what I feared; namely that all aliases show up during auto-complete from the "To:" field of a new message. Do you think this is the intended behavior? This is not how it was working in 4.5.x, and personally I find it pretty confusing. If you have five users in the GAL named Mike you will now see 10 listings. I guess for the most part it doesn't matter if you pick the "real" address or the alias, but do people really want to see names listed two, or even more times? Also, I would imagine some users have filters setup on the "To:" address, especially for things like postmaster and webmaster. I know there is an open RFE to hide specific aliases, but I think showing an alias is really the exception rather than the rule.
I guess I'll do a bit more testing, and then probably file a bug. Bummer, looks like my migration to 5.0 might be delayed. Unless I decide to use the external LDAP directory, but again, don't really want to do this unless necessary.

mmorse · Post by **mmorse** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 11:11 am

I think the To: field was originally hidden in one bug, then changed again.

I've always been just hoping Bug 14919 - hide aliases in GAL on a per-alias basis solves it all...

Read where they were tested:

Bug 15366 - All aliases appear when using GAL to create a Contact Group - your bug & where tested works fine

Bug 10456 - hide account alias in gal search for ZWC -tested ok in 'find attendees' and address picker

Bug 18308 - Aliases should be able to be hidden in detailed contact view for GAL entries was just closed as a dupe but tests ok

mmorse · Post by **mmorse** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 11:23 am

Don't know if you saw my other edit to my first post above.

I agree the long workaround doesn't really work for NE as it uses up licenses; up to you, either:

A) Maybe get Bug 10456 - hide account alias in gal search for ZWC reopened...but it's from 4.0 and that RFE flipped sides a bunch

B) 5th RFE "Hide aliases on to: field GAL auto complete if existing match for an account is found" would help get decent behavior when people don't manage the 'hide alias' attribute that's going to come out of 14919

-Since part of the problem is sometimes you want them to appear & sometimes you don't, see attached pics - which leads to:

C) Or just rally support for Bug 14919 - hide aliases in GAL on a per-alias basis -just added my vote

D) An RFE for combining them into one drop down entry (showing one account per line with all the matching aliases on the same line) would be interesting/challenging...
aliasShowingMatchesFromSameSccount.PNG
aliasSpecificFine.PNG

soxfan · Post by **soxfan** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 12:43 pm

Thanks again Mike. My biggest issue is that I recently went through my system and created over 400 aliases to tie each user's Zimbra account to another UNIX system where we use a person's three initials for their login. So. although I am an FOSS user (at least right now), even if I liked the workaround, which I don't, I'm already committed to using aliases.
I did just now vote for 14919 hide aliases in GAL on a per-alias basis. Although if the code to hide aliases in the "to:" auto-complete is broken I wonder if this would solve the problem.
I think I'm going to go ahead an create a new bug, specifically for aliases showing up in the "To:" field for GAL auto-complete.