Faculty e-mail aliases - procedure for conversion to M365
The faculty mail server will soon be shut down - all user mail is in M365; e-mail aliases, i.e. contact group addresses in the form skupina@phil.muni.cz, which are now still defined on the current mail server, will also be transferred to M365. In the new mode, manually maintained aliases can be set up and managed directly by their owners (typically the person requesting the alias) in the INET environment; the recipient of the alias can also be maintained automatically.
This is to ask anyone who has had a faculty alias set up in the past to transfer it or have it transferred to M365 - please go to the "How to" section.
Please note: nothing here applies to personal aliases linked to a specific individual, e.g. jmeno.prijmeni@phil.muni.cz, prijmeni@phil.muni.cz etc. - these aliases will be 1:1 converted to M365 and users need not pay any attention to them.
Important terms
We want to transfer the current aliases (about 450 items) from the faculty server to M365
by the end of November 2024.
Reason for change, impacts/benefits for users
The Faculty of Arts has been operating its own e-mail server rosret since 1992; in 2022, the transfer of all FF users' mail to the Microsoft 365 environment (M365) was completed. Since then, the faculty server has been used only for routing mail to users' mailboxes (mail is no longer stored on it), and in particular, the so-called aliases are defined on it, i.e. addresses used for sending mail to multiple defined recipients.
One of the technical goals of moving the mail to M365 was to prospectively shut down the faculty server and thus simplify the mail flow of our users. To do this, we also need to move the faculty aliases to a suitable environment. After evaluating the available options, we came to the conclusion that we would move the aliases to the same environment as the user mail, i.e., M365. We presented this proposal to the faculty management at the beginning of 2024 and they agreed to it. Since then, we have been technically preparing for the transfer, and are now proceeding to make the change.
In addition to the technical intent (to shut down the mail server), we have pursued the following goals in designing the solution:
- not to create another system, but to use existing tools;
- to make the creation and maintenance of aliases accessible to the end customers (you), so that you can make the changes yourself without special knowledge in the system you know;
- to maintain alias recipients automatically, if possible.
The resulting solution is described as a new CIT service on this page: https://it.muni.cz/en/services/phil/e-mail-aliases-on-ff
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1. Make a reflection
Please do a quick check if you have ever requested an alias with the address skupina@phil.muni.cz. If you have even the slightest suspicion that you have, please follow the steps below.
If you are using the group address neco-phil@mail.muni.cz, this is an address that exists solely in the MU IS, not on the FF mail server, and these addresses are not affected by the process described here, they continue to function without change.
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2. Check the status
Go to https://www.phil.muni.cz/cgi-bin/alias.cgi (accessible only from the MU network) and check whether the alias exists and who is included in it.
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3.a Delete the unused alias
If you know that you no longer need a previously established alias, please let us know using the standard form - just clearly state the alias and request deletion. Thank you.
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3.b Let the already transferred alias do its work quietly
Some aliases have already been transferred to M365 - nothing needs to be done with them at this point. In the listing from point 2 you can see them as follows (in bold):
- alias name: ten-alias
alias recipient: [cokoliv]@group.muni.cz - alias name: ten-alias
alias recipient: [cokoliv]@shared.muni.cz - alias name: ten-alias
alias recipient: [cokoliv]@space.muni.cz
You won't see members of the [whatever]@group.muni.cz alias in the listing - but if you are the owner of a group with this address, you will see the group in the Inet listing.
- alias name: ten-alias
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4. Read the description
Enter the page https://it.muni.cz/sluzby/phil/e-mailove-aliasy-na-ff and read the description of the new service.
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5. Choose a variant
After reading the service description, do a quick evaluation and select the mode in which your alias(s) will be maintained:
The mode can be changed later, this is not an irreversible decision.
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6a Request an automatically maintained alias
Open the form and request an autofilled alias. In the first item "Group name", enter the string before the "@" character from the address of the alias to be converted, i.e. for the alias group-xyz@phil.muni.cz enter "group-xyz".
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6b Create a manually maintained alias
Create a group in the INET system and then ask INET to assign the address of the alias to the newly created group. The CIT FF will confirm the assignment and the alias is ready for use in the new mode.
Tips
Sharing content in M365
A new alias is an email address assigned to an M365 group, and this group can be used for other operations - in particular, to share documents in OneDrive or SharePoint, just enter the alias address instead of a person when setting up sharing.
Check recipients
After entering an alias address in the "To" field in Outlook, you can check exactly who the recipient of the alias is - just hover over the inserted contact to see the details.
