Hi all
In this message I want to describe a feature I think it's worth
discussing. AFAIK no other imap server currently implemented anything
like this (please correct me, if I'm wrong).
Until now, the mailbox system of Cyrus imap is more or less flat.
There are numerous mailboxes of users and public folders one level
below the root mailbox (this one you see if you connect as
administrator), which can contain subfolders. This is why I called it
"more or less flat". Users are only known to the imap server, if
there is a mailbox below the root which belongs to them. There is no
such thing as automatically generated shared folders for all or
groups of users.
My suggestion would be that mailboxes can be part of a mailbox/shared
folder tree. Two examples (sf* are shared folders and mb* are
Mailboxes):
sfAll
-mbUserA
-mbUserB
-mbUserC
sfAll is a shared folder for all mailboxes below (mbUserA, mbUserB,
mbUserC).
Now a more complex one:
sfAll
-sfLocationA
--mbUserA
--mbUserB
-sfLocationB
--mbUserC
--mbUserD
--sfDev
---mbUserE
---mbUserF
--sfTec
---mbUserG
sfAll is a shared folder for all users (A-G), sfLocationA for mbUserA
and mbUserB and sfLocationB for C-G (and so on for sfDev and sfTec).
All nodes in this tree are therefore shared folders and all leafs are
mailboxes.
The user mbUserF can for example post messages into sfDev,
sfLocationB and sfAll and can therefore reach all people below the
level of the shared folder he posted.
I hope I clarified my suggestion and appreciate any comments.
Regards,
Norbert
