Update: This post is based on screenshots prior to version 4.3, please refer to the retooled carbon copy on the wiki.

http://wiki.cerb4.com/wiki/Running_multiple_independent_companies_through_a_single_Helpdesk

I responded to a question the other day in the forums which brought up an interesting dilemma:

From what I can tell, I’m able to have multiple inbound email addresses, but what I really need are multiple outbound email addresses, preferably tied to each inbound server.

Essentially what I am working with is a large company with a number of smaller, logical identities beneath it. Each smaller company should have an inbound email (ie support@companyA.com, support@companyB.com, etc) and use that same address for outbound. If they all have to use a single outbound, it just won’t work for us.

This particular situation can be translated into the much more abstract problem of “how do I run multiple independently-operated companies through a single Helpdesk”. So let’s break this down into a couple of pre-requisites:

• Every company (or group) needs their own inbound and outbound e-mail address.
• Make sure each group receives only their mail.

For starters give each company its own group in the Helpdesk, so if you have two companies inside your Cerb4 Helpdesk called Alpha and Beta, then you would have two groups called Alpha and Beta. Click ‘helpdesk setup’ then the ‘Groups’ tab.

(Seeing the free version limit of 3 groups? If you filled out the survey during installation you should have, or soon will, receive a “Community” license to enter. You can also edit the ‘Sales’ and ‘Support’ group if you wish.)

If each group having their own inbound address requires multiple mailboxes, that’s pretty simple to achieve. Go to ‘helpdesk setup’, ‘Mail Setup’ tab and continue to “add new mail servers”. If all the e-mail addresses sit in one mailbox, just use that one mail server, and then use the ‘Mail Routing’ tab to separate mail into groups based on e-mail addresses, e.g. To:alpha@* -> Group Alpha .

The tricky part can be achieving multiple outbound addresses. Now while you can’t specify multiple SMTP servers in ‘Mail Setup’, you can create unique “reply-to” addresses for each group. Click over to ‘group setup’, (group name), the ‘Mail Preferences’ tab, and set a new address for the “send replies as e-mail”.

The final thing to do is isolate each group with their own mail, which can be done with mail routing. Go back to ‘helpdesk setup’, the ‘Mail Routing’ tab, and create some basic patterns to match mail addressed to one company to their corresponding group.

With those three pieces in place you should be able to distribute your mail between your separated companies. Let me give you a basic outline to see how all the pieces fit together.

INBOUND MAIL SERVERS

Alpha (POP3 account)

Beta (POP3 account)

TWO COMPANIES (OR GROUPS)

Alpha = Group Alpha

Beta = Group Beta

REPLY-TO (SEND REPLIES AS E-MAIL)

Group Alpha = support@alpha

Group Beta = support@beta

MAIL ROUTING

support@alpha -> Group Alpha

support@beta -> Group Beta

Now you can truly have independent companies that can chat back and forth with no strings attached*

-joegeck@wgm

* If you’ve been around Cerb4 long enough, you’ll know there was one nagging problem which made this “independent companies” concept a little difficult to implement in practice. Our users were running into some unexpected behavior when they attempted to communicate between groups. When Helpdesk workers from one group e-mailed another group, it would NOT treat their ticket the same way it would a typical customer. You’d get outbound instead of inbound, waiting for reply wouldn’t update properly, and all kinds of odd results. While it was reasonable for you guys to assume workers could cross-mail each other, the Helpdesk wasn’t prepared to handle that. Well not to worry because that entire issue was resolved and corrected as part of the 4.1 release, and should no longer be a problem.