MAIL

How Domino formats the sender's Internet address in outbound messages
Outbound SMTP messages always include the Internet address of the sender. IBM® Lotus® Domino™ can obtain the sender's address, sometimes called the reply address, from the sender's Location document, the sender's Person, or by constructing the address based on a default format or rules configured in the Global Domain document. To ensure that message replies are routed correctly to the original sender, reply addresses should match the sender's Internet address.

To comply with Internet addressing standards, Domino uses RFC 821 or RFC 822 address formats for any message sent over SMTP, as illustrated in the following table.
Internet Address StyleAddress FormatExample
RFC 821Username@IPDomain.TopLevelDomainTyler_Hamilton@acme.com
RFC 822"FriendlyName" <Username@IPDomain.TopLevelDomain>"Tyler Hamilton" <Tyler_Hamilton@acme.com>
If a Domino SMTP server receives a message that is in IBM® Lotus® Notes® mail format -- as when a server in the local network transfers a message to an SMTP server for routing to the Internet -- it must convert that message to MIME before transferring it over SMTP. As part of the conversion process, the Router replaces Notes-style addresses in the message, including the sender's address, with an Internet-style address.

It's easy for the Router to add the appropriate address when it's been defined in the sender's Person document. In this case, the sender's Notes client enters the Internet address in the INetFrom field of the message. When converting the message for SMTP transfer, the Router uses the supplied Internet address.

For more information about Location documents, see the topic Creating or editing a Location document manually if you have installed Lotus Notes Help. Or visit the Documentation Library at the Lotus Developer Domain at http://www.lotus.com/ldd/doc to download or view Notes Help.

If the sender's Internet address is not present in the Notes message, the Router can attempt to retrieve it from the Person document. For address lookups to occur, you must enable them on the MIME - Conversion Options - Outbound tab of the server's Configuration Settings document (if lookups are disabled in the Configuration Settings document, they can occur if enabled in the Global domain document).

Finally, if the Router cannot obtain the sender's Internet address from either the message itself or the Person document, it will construct the address. You can specify the rules for constructing this address in the Global domain document, but in the absence of a Global domain document, the Router constructs Internet addresses using the following default format:


For example, the Router on the host smtp.acme.com would construct the following default Internet address for the Notes user Tyler Hamilton/Sales@Europe: Tyler_Hamilton/Sales%Europe@acme.com.
Internet Address componentDescription
Full_NameThe Notes common name of the sender. The Router replaces spaces in the name with underscores. For example, Tyler Hamilton becomes Tyler_Hamilton.
OrgThe organizational certifier or certifiers in the sender's Notes hierarchical name. For example /Sales.
DominoDomainThe name of the Domino domain that hosts the user's mail file. For example, Europe. By default, the Domino domain is separated from the Org name by the percent (%) character.
IPDomain.TopLevelDomainThe Internet domain suffix listed in the Fully qualified Internet host name field of the Server document of the server converting the message for SMTP transfer. For example, the domain suffix of the server smtp.acme.com is acme.com.
To ensure that messages always include the sender's correct and reply-able Internet address, always add the Internet address to a user's Location document and Person document. To fill in the Internet Address field for all Person documents in which the field is blank, use the Internet Address Tool.

See also