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I am a programmer and don't have experience in Outlook configurations. Our company has two email domains namely xyz.com and xyz.biz. Each employee has an email id on one of these domains but not both depending on the project they are working on.

The problem we are facing is that when a communication email is sent from the Accounts, HR, Admin, etc departments, they need to send the email twice. Once through the xyz.com account to all employees with an email address on xyz.com and once through xyz.biz to all employees with an email address on xyz.biz. I am not sure why they have to send two separate emails but the IT team has directed all departments to do so as there is no other solution according to them. Even though two different groups have been created, sending an email to employees in a group of xyz.biz from xyz.com does not seem to work.

I want to know if Outlook provides a feature such that we can configure some kind of rules to send an email through an id on xyz.com to all users on xyz.com and the same email gets sent automatically to users on xyz.biz through an id on xyz.biz.

The only technical details I know is that we are using Exchange 2003 and the IT team claims that this is a limitation causing the problem.

Edit 1 :

Our company is split into two main divisions depending on the type of projects. I am pretty sure I use domain XYZ wheras the employees in the other division use the doman ABC to log in into the windows machine or outlook itself. Also, employees in domain XYZ can access the machines on the network in domain ABC but not the other way around

Edit 2: There is one correction. The employees can access only those machines in the network which are in the same domain as theirs. Cross domain access is not possible over the network. On the other hand, employees are able to send emails to anyone regardless of which domain in which the recipient or the sender is. The problem occurs only when a communication email is sent out that uses email groups instead of email-id's.

CKing
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1 Answers1

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Not really sure what the limitation is that they are talking about. It should be very easy to setup either a static or dynamic distribution group in AD/Exchange that then sends e-mail to all employees regardless of the domain they actively use for Email.

One key difference between Exchange and many other POP or IMAP systems is that the e-mail address tied to a user account matters very little except for inbound e-mail. The system relies on Active Directory for the complete list of users. I imagine that you only have on Active Directory domain (i.e. everyone logs in with a username like OurDomain\MyUsername) but your IT group has setup two inbound public e-mail domains and then assigns them to each user based on the project you mentioned.

It should be easy for them to setup a distribution group like everyone@OurDomain.local or hr@OurDomain.local to send internal e-mails to everyone, then just use AD to control the group membership.

This is a pretty simple and common thing that Exchange can handle without much fuss.

Exchange 2003 calls them Query Based Distribution Lists.

If there is a specific problem your IT folks are worried about it would be good to post that as a new question as that would better serve the community... I think.

UPDATE:

After getting some clarification it sounds like you have a One-Way Domain Trust setup which does complicate things a bit. The question now becomes, which domain does the e-mail server reside in, a.k.a. what's the primary domain? If the mail server is in the XYZ domain you should still be able to setup a Universal distribution list to include users from both domains. However because it sounds like a one-way trust if the mail server is in ABC I'm not sure that it will work.

Essentially you have to create universal groups which both domains are aware of and the mail server can take advantage of. A two-way domain trust makes this a breeze. You might have this with logon restrictions in place, its just hard to tell with the information provided.

UPDATE 2: Well, this doesn't help much. Still can't tell if its two different domain controllers or a forest but with no trust between the two networks. If its two different domain controllers there would have to be two different exchange boxes, which would make this nearly impossible. Still not sure why there isn't a trust between your domains though, that seems like a simple logical management thing to do.

Either way, I don't think we can help much more unless you get your sysadmin(s) to post questions here for advice.

Brent Pabst
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  • I have to do some reading before I can completely understand what you are saying. Although, our company is split into two main divisions depending on the type of projects. I am pretty sure I use domain XYZ wheras the employees in the other division use the doman ABC to log in into the windows machine or outlook itself. Also, employees in domain XYZ can access the machines on the network in domain ABC but not the other way around. – CKing Jul 02 '12 at 13:30
  • @bot OK, that changes things, this means both your email and windows domains are different, I'll update the answer in a few. – Brent Pabst Jul 02 '12 at 13:50
  • I understand that I have not provided enough information. The problem is that the IT guys are always busy with something or the other and troubling them for information when they have already said that there is no solution can get me into trouble ;) – CKing Jul 03 '12 at 11:01
  • Your answer makes sense. I have posted a question to the IT guys asking them whether the problem can be solved by creating a universal group that can be shared by the two domains and I am waiting for their reply – CKing Jul 03 '12 at 11:08
  • I have edited the question with some corrections! – CKing Jul 03 '12 at 11:17
  • Thanks for the help. Guess I'll have to wait till the system admins finally have the time to solve this problem. – CKing Jul 03 '12 at 14:11