Exchange 2007 and parental email addresses

[pete]

We're moving towards using email as the predominant non-emergency/urgent method of contacting parents. We're collecting parental email addresses of the new intake and will apply this retroactively across the school as the contact information trudges in.

 

But I have a conundrum now. We'll have distribution lists for Year7Parents, Year8Parents etc and also the individual parents available as contacts in case a teacher needs to let a parent know about something.

 

So ideally, these contacts should be made available to teachers by some method, probably Exchange.

But we don't want the kids to be able to send random parents amusing emails.

But we do want little Joe Bloggs to be able to email Mrs Bloggs to ask if she can drop off his PE kit at lunchtime.

 

It's trivial to prevent the kids sending emails to a distribution list, but how do I prevent them sending emails to parents without hiding the contacts (approx 850 of them) from the GAL (and so making them unavailable individually to teachers).

 

Am I in ADModify / custom GAL territory?

 

Bonus question - how do I set permissions on who can see address lists other than the GAL? Say I create an address list called Y7Parents, based on Custom Attribute 1 (saying y7 parent, or whatever), can I restrict that list to just teaching staff?

[spc-rocket]

We're moving towards using email as the predominant non-emergency/urgent method of contacting parents. We're collecting parental email addresses of the new intake and will apply this retroactively across the school as the contact information trudges in.

 

But I have a conundrum now. We'll have distribution lists for Year7Parents, Year8Parents etc and also the individual parents available as contacts in case a teacher needs to let a parent know about something.

 

So ideally, these contacts should be made available to teachers by some method, probably Exchange.

But we don't want the kids to be able to send random parents amusing emails.

But we do want little Joe Bloggs to be able to email Mrs Bloggs to ask if she can drop off his PE kit at lunchtime.

 

It's trivial to prevent the kids sending emails to a distribution list, but how do I prevent them sending emails to parents without hiding the contacts (approx 850 of them) from the GAL (and so making them unavailable individually to teachers).

 

Am I in ADModify / custom GAL territory?

 

Bonus question - how do I set permissions on who can see address lists other than the GAL? Say I create an address list called Y7Parents, based on Custom Attribute 1 (saying y7 parent, or whatever), can I restrict that list to just teaching staff?

 

Hiya,

 

You probably need to need to a) create a security or distribution list with all the students and 2) use this distribution/security list in each of the parent's contact so any member of the security or distribution list cannot send email to a particular contact. Effectivelt this will not allow students to send emails to parent's emails.

 

You will have to use ADmodify to set this for bulk but should be fairly easy. The tricky part is finding out what the custom exchange atrribute is called for restricting the users who can set (i.e. reject messages from recipients) option.

 

As for your your second question. There is a setting for security of the address, you have to use ADSI edit for this but once you set this all the parents address list will not be available to students although they can see the list but cannot view the content of it i.e. the parents contacts.

 

Have a look at the following video tutorials for managing address list:

 

Address Lists in Exchange 2007 (Part 1)

 

Address Lists in Exchange 2007 (Part 2)

 

HTH,

 

Let me know if you want more info.

 

Ash.

[pete]

Cheers, but this bit:

 

Hiya,

You probably need to need to a) create a security or distribution list with all the students and 2) use this distribution/security list in each of the parent's contact so any member of the security or distribution list cannot send email to a particular contact. Effectivelt this will not allow students to send emails to parent's emails.

Ash.

 

will prevent little Joe Bloggs emailing his mum, because OWA will (by default) link [email protected] to the existing contact when he types it in and exchange will tell him to get stuffed. Won't it?

 

I'd like it so while they can't search for an email address, if they already know it (in the case of Joe and Mrs Bloggs) it still works.

[pete]

Second bonus question.

 

I'm working out how to order parental contacts into address lists, using custom attributes. How are others handling the "parent with multiple kids at the school issue" with regard to mailings?

 

For example:

 

Mrs Bloggs has Fred, Henry and Joe Bloggs at the school in Years 7, 9 and 11. So she needs to be included on mailings for year 7, year 9 and year 11.

 

So far I've come up with:

 

Custom attribute 4 that defines parent or not - so "all parents" mailing list will be base on this

Custom attribute 5 that defines first child year group - ie Y7

Custom attribute 6 that defines second child year group - Y9

Custom attribute 7 that defines third child year group - Y11

 

Then an address list for Y7 that filters based on custom attribute 4 = parent and if custom attribute 5, 6 or 7 = Y7.

 

I suspect I'm over-thinking this - would I be better off adding contacts to distribution groups in AD instead?

 

Say an External Contacts OU > Parents > Mrs Bloggs and add Mrs Bloggs to distribution groups called Y7Parents, Y8Parents, Y9Parents and Parents?

 

edit: although, that doesn't add her to a searchable "List of Year 7 Parents" if the Head of Y7 needs to email her. Not sure how much we need to do that, since they'll know her name.

Edited August 21, 2009 by pete