Mail Flow Rules & Exceptions

[Ben O'Neill]

I'm relatively new to the job of administering mailboxes etc, and I'm trying to accomplish something that isn't quite working.

We have two employees (call them Fred - fred@company.com and Bob - bob@company.com). They both work in the same client-facing team and receive an inordinate amount of duplicated emails (as the external sender will email one and cc the other) which creates a lot of double handling.

I've got a rule in place that redirects ALL emails sent to Fred OR Bob to Bob and removes them from Fred so now Bob's the only one that receives it. If it's meant for Fred, Bob will send it to him.

The issue I've got is that if Fred sends an email to an external recipient and that recipient sends a reply directly to Fred, it will still get redirected to Bob. I did create an exception to the rule that says:
Except if...
A message header matches...
'Return-Path' header matches 'fred@company.com'

But it doesn't seem to work - everything still goes to Bob.

Any hints?

[#2]

Why not create a Shared Mailbox that they'll both have access to? Publish that email address as the focal point for email that goes to them. They can then process the new items to that mailbox. Replies going out can also be from that mailbox if needed.

[#3]

Hey @Ben O'Neill,

I agree with @Cary Siemers for overall approach. I think that is the right solution. Create a shared mailbox called something like "Clientname@ourdomain.com" and just have the client email there. Add both Fred and Bob as owners and let them send emails out as that. Long term I would think of that route.

Short term, we would need to see more specifics to help you. What you are describing should work but we would need to see both the details of your rule, as well as a header that was not working to try to troubleshoot further.

Adam

[#4]

Hi Cary, thanks for the reply. I think that is something we'd need to consider. It definitely sounds like a better long-term solution!

In that scenario, would emails sent to Fred or Bob's direct email address still be redirected to that shared mailbox? Also, what sort of rule would you need to get rid of duplicates (say if Fred and Bob were both sent the same email, and that same email was redirected to the shared mailbox twice).

[#5]

Thanks Adam. I also agree with Cary but, just for my own knowledge, attached is a screenshot of the actual rule itself. Any hints as to why it doesn't work?

The redirect itself works fine - but the exception appears to be ignored.

[#6]

Ben,

have you checked the email headers, if the Return-Path attribute contains the value you use in rule configuration?

-Thomas

[#7]

Hi Thomas, yes I'm pretty sure it's correct.

The only thing "missing" is the colon but I wouldn't have thought that would have been required. I.e. the attached screenshot that shows the message header shows "Return-Path: don@xxx.com".

The attached screenshot that shows the rule itself omits the : after the word Path but I wouldn't think the colon would form part of the header name.