Old names associated with email address

Posted by Comfortable_Lead_561@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 14 comments

I’m trying to resolve an issue that has me struggling.

We are using Google for Business for our email service. Several accounts have role based names, like assistantpm@domain.org and manager@domain.org.

Over the years the people in these roles have changed. We update the name associated with the email account. However, some people who send email, both within and outside our organization, still have references to the old name.

It causes confusion because when you look at the email you think, ok, Jane got copied on the email, but it didn’t go to the current address associated with Jane. It went to either an old address, or one that is no longer in use.

Is there anything I can do as the admin to help with this situation and flush the cache of these old names?

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scaredmaple259@reddit

reckon the shared mailbox route is your best bet, swap those role addresses over to groups and have em forward to whoever's actually in the role now, saves you from this mess down the line.

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cacheqzor@reddit

Yeah, this. Shared mailbox / group and then give the actual person a normal, human-looking address.

The other trick I’ve used is to make the role account something generic like “Assistant PM” with no real person’s name in the display, and then let the user’s own account show their real name. So people see:

From: Assistant PM assistantpm@...
Cc: Jane Smith jane@...

That way no one mentally ties “assistantpm@” to a specific human, and when the person changes, nothing looks “wrong” in old threads. Over time the confusion mostly dies out.

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scaredmaple259@reddit

that's a solid approach too, the generic display name thing actually fixes the root problem instead of just patching it, ngl way cleaner than what i was thinking.

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zrad603@reddit

So manager@domain.org gets forwarded to bob@domain.org but when bob@domain.org replies to an email, people save bob@domain.org as a contact? Then bob leaves.

There's nothing you can really do from stopping people saving bob@domain.org as a contact.

What you can do is have dead-letter mailboxes for ex employees, and go through it from time to time. You can also set auto-reply, but doing auto-reply outside of the organization is not something I would recommend.

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ExceptionEX@reddit

I think it is worse than that, I think in the Fname Lname on manager@domain.org they are changing that when a new person takes that role, which is why its multiple different names when different people email that address, its based on the recipient saved the first time they were contacted.

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ExceptionEX@reddit

Don't associate individual names to positional email.

You can't control what others store in the their contacts, and they are likely going to forever keep the name that was associated with the email the first time they saved the contact.

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Savoy62@reddit

seems like a clear case of email forwarding gm@yourorg.com = bob.jones@yourorg.com, eventually retiring the gm@yourorg.com. If there comes a time when bob leaves, and jason.jones@yourorg.com comes in, and incoming email for bob jones is auto responded with bob jones, and transition out of this department your new contact is jason.jones@yourorg.com

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LeonReshi@reddit

I've never worked with Google Workspace before, but for this use case, why don't you use Shared Mailboxes or Google Group / Collaborative Inbox and simply change the permissions from time to time?

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SVD_NL@reddit

Yeah, that's usually the best option. You can also use "send on behalf of" if you want things to be more personal.

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MalletNGrease@reddit

Sound like an X Y problem. Are senders trying to contact the person, or the position? If person -> use name address. If position -> generic address.

I would kill/convert the generic accounts and make them distribution groups, shared mailboxes or aliases of the named account instead. Maybe an auto-response rule with a notice to update contact info.

Or go the chaos monkey route and just let the mail bounce. If it's important enough people will reach out alternatively.

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cheetah1cj@reddit

There is nothing from an admin perspective to clear the cache for everyone, that is client-side. The only option would be to force them to use the web version of email which may not cache, but I would not advise that.

However, I would question why you are using role-based email addresses in the first place. Especially when, as you pointed out, someone may still be at the company with a different role. The better solution is that every person gets a company email with their name, that will always be their email regardless of position. Then, if you want role-based emails that anyone can email, then those should be distribution groups or shared mailboxes (or the equivalent within Google Mail, I know those are the terms in Microsoft). Those would then be attached to the individual email address of whoever has that job title. Your current set up is not scalable, what happens when there's more than one person in a job title, for example multiple HR reps, will they be HRrep1@domain.org and HRrep2@domain.org? And it leads to issues like this, of people not knowing who they're actually talking to.

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We update the name associated with the email account. However, some

Bad practice.

Usually we have those accounts' name as "Regional Manager". Don't personalise it.

In addition ,Jane Doe our Regional.Manager also has Jane.doe@example.com as her official mail for things like HR.