Using the Auto BCC Feature to Create One-to-Many Recipient Aliases

Applies to HMS Version: 2.1+

The Auto BCC feature of the Hurricane MTA Server is not only useful for sending copies of specific messages to other addresses [http://support.socketlabs.com/kb/119], but also for replacing specific recipient addresses or addresses matching a pattern with a predefined list of addresses, effectively creating a recipient alias.  Currently this feature can only be configured through flat files.

CONSIDERATIONS

The following should be considered before using this feature:

If a message is addressed to multiple recipients, only the aliased recipient addresses will be removed and replaced with the BCC list. Other addresses will not be modified.

If multiple recipients in a message match the same regular expression, the BCC'd addresses will not be added more than once. 
* The BCC operation is not recursive, so recipients added to BCC by this feature that would also match an address replacement entry would not cause a second or infinite round of replacement.

CONFIGURATION

This feature is enabled and configured by adding a single line to the [OTHER] section of the GENERAL.CONFIG file found in an individual account's config directory. Please remember to reload the target account's configuration after making these changes in order for those changes to take effect.

FIELD: BccReplace

DESCRIPTION: A ~*~ delimited list containing a regular expression, a pipe symbol, and a comma delimited list of addresses to add when the regular expression matches an existing recipient address. The original address will be removed.

EXAMPLE: The following example contains two rules in order to show how to configure multiple Auto BCC rules.

BccReplace=.@example.com|a@example.com~~list@example.org|c@example.com,d@example.com

Using the above example, any messages sent to @example.com directly will actually be BCC'd to a@example.com. The original recipient will not receive the message, so this rule acts like a message forwarder. 

Also using the above example, messages sent to list@example.org will actually be BCC'd to c@example.com and d@example.com, so this rule acts like a mailing list alias. The replacements will not trigger further matches against the .*@example.com entry.

RELATED ARTICLES

For more information about writing regular expressions, we recommend third-party resources such as the following:

http://www.regular-expressions.info/quickstart.html
[http://www.regular-expressions.info/quickstart.html] - An introduction to regular expressions
http://www.regular-expressions.info/reference.html
[http://www.regular-expressions.info/reference.html] - A quick reference to core regular expression syntax
http://regexpal.com/ [http://regexpal.com/] - An online regular expression tester. Highlights test data that matches a regular expression

The following Knowledge Base articles may also be of interest:

* Using the Auto BCC Feature to Copy All or Part of a Mail Stream [http://support.socketlabs.com/kb/119]