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How To Your Share Your Mailboxes With Others
by Hanz Makmur


The Computer Science Mail System allows a user to share their mailboxes with other users on the same server without giving up username and password of the mail account. This feature is very useful for users who work in a group without cluttering individual user's mailboxes with duplicate messages.

Below you will find a description on how to access a shared mailboxes. All the steps described below are  done using the webmail interface at http://dragon.rutgers.edu. 

Sharing A Mailbox (Folder) 

In the example below, a user wants to share an folder called: Purchases to the following users: jack and jill.

 1. Click on the folder to share. In this case Purchases  folder from your Folder lists window.

Figure 1. Folder Lists.

2. A Content Window as shown in Figure 2 is displayed. Click on Folder Management 
link to view the Access Control List options of the folder as shown in Figure 3.


Figure 2. Content of Puchases Folder.

3. Enter username of a user you would like to give access to in  the Access Control List Identifier textbox. Click the proper access that you would like to give each user and click Update to save the changes.  You will need to repeat this process for each additional user. For more information about what each check box means, please refer to the table below. In the Figure3 example below,  access is shared for username jack and jill.  


Figure 3. Access Control List

4. Once the folder is shared, users specified aboved will have access to the shared folder. To access this shared folder, the user given the access will need to add the folder to their list of accessible folders. Once access is established, users will be able to see these folders from the webmail interface and from any imap mail client they use such as Thunderbird, Outlook Express.  See: How To Access Shared Mailbox.

The following Mailbox access rights are supported:
(described in http://dragon.rutgers.edu/Guide/Mailboxes.html)

l (Lookup)
If you grant a user the Lookup access right, that user will be able to see this mailbox when it asks the Server to list all mailboxes in your Account.
r (Read/Select)
If you grant a user the Read access right, that user will be able to open (select) this mailbox and see (read) the messages in this mailbox.
s (Seen)
If you grant a user the Seen access right, that user will be able to mark messages as read (seen). Usually a message is automatically marked as seen when a user reads it. But if this access right is not granted to a user reading the mailbox, the mailbox message "seen" status will not be changed.
w (Write/Flags)
If you grant a user the Write access right, that user will be able to set message flags: i.e. to mark messages as answered or "flagged", and to reset the message flags.
d (Delete)
If you grant a user the Delete access right, that user will be able to mark messages as deleted and to compress the mailbox, removing all its messages marked as deleted.
i (Insert)
If you grant a user the Insert access right, that user will be able to append messages to this mailbox and to copy messages from other mailboxes into this one.
p (Post)
This access right is not used by modern mailers.
c (Create)
If you grant a user the Create access right, that user will be able to create new submailboxes "inside" this mailbox.
a (Administer)
If you grant a user the Administer access right, that user will be able:
-to modify the mailbox ACL
-to modify the mailbox meta-data (such as the Mailbox Class)
-to see Hidden mailbox messages.
Apply to Sub-Folders
When a submailbox is created, it inherits the ACL of the "parent" mailbox. This means that if you create the INBOX/sales mailbox, it is created with the same ACL as specified for the INBOX mailbox.

In order to be able to delete a foreign mailbox, a user should have:
-the Create access right for the outer (parent) mailbox, and
-the Delete access right for the specified mailbox.

In order to be able to rename a foreign mailbox, a user should have:
-the Create access right for the outer (parent) mailbox of the original mailbox, and
-the Delete access right for the specified original mailbox, and
-the Create access right for the outer (parent) mailbox of the new mailbox (mailbox name).


This concludes the steps needed to share a folder.  If you need further help, please contact: help@cs.rutgers.edu
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