Automatic Creation of Mailboxes

Cyrus IMAP features the ability to create mailboxes automatically;

• for successful login events,

• for email messages that arrive for a user,

• when a Sieve script uses the "fileinto" action.

When operating an IT infrastructure, Cyrus IMAP may only be one part of such larger environment. When adding a user John Doe <john.doe@example.org>, several pieces may need to fall or put in place to ensure the account is fully functional.

Cyrus IMAP allows the automatic creation of John's INBOX, and selected sub-folders, either when John first logs in to Cyrus IMAP, or when the first message is to be delivered to John's INBOX.

Additional features of this functionality include;

• the automatic creation of a Sieve script for Server Side Filtering (Sieve).

• setting a storage quota and message quota for the user,

• automatic subscription to folders in the Personal Namespace,

• automatic subscription to a selection of or all shared folders.

Important

Third party solutions incorporating Cyrus IMAP, and distributors of Cyrus IMAP (such as your Linux distribution) may have disabled this functionality altogether, during the building of the packages -- most likely because they employ different means to get user's mailboxes created.

Cyrus IMAP does not currently strip options from man-pages that are rendered irrelevant by the functionality not being built in, so while the man-page on your system may refer to settings related to this functionality, the actual functionality may not be available.

To enable the automatic creation of mailboxes, set the following options in imapd.conf(5).

• autocreate_quota

• autocreate_post

Other settings in imapd.conf(5) affecting automatic options.

Autocreation of mailboxes

• autocreate_inbox_folders

Automatic quota settings

• autocreate_quota_messages

Autocreation of Sieve scripts

• autocreate_sieve_folders

• autocreate_sieve_script

• autocreate_sieve_script_compile

• autocreate_sieve_script_compiled

Automated folder subscriptions

• autocreate_subscribe_folders

• autocreate_subscribe_sharedfolders

• autocreate_subscribe_sharedfolders_all

Autocreation of users

• autocreate_users

See imapd.conf(5) for the full documentation of all options.

See also

• Cyrus IMAP Murder (Server Aggregation)

• Mailbox Distribution

• Quota

Limitations to the Automatic Creation of Mailboxes

1. A user may in fact be able to successfully login to IMAP with both a full primary recipient email address such as john.doe@example.org, as well as a secondary recipient email address such as jdoe@example.org.

   Unless a process known as login username canonification is used, this could result in two different mailbox hierarchies being created;

   • user/john.doe@example.org

   • user/jdoe@example.org

2. When a user Jane Gi <jane.gi@example.org> marries John Doe and adopts her new husband's surname, her primary recipient email address may change to become jane.doe@example.org.

   Note that John Doe does not need to be an example.org user for such event to occur, and that many countries allow the husband to take the maiden name of their spouse instead -- so even if the employees and/or associates of an organization running Cyrus IMAP are exclusively male, this may still apply to that organization.

   The functionality stated in this document does not rename user/jane.gi@example.org to become user/jane.doe@example.org.

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