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Once you understand the four possible "packages" of mail routing data, the mechanism for gathering the data and passing it to IIQ is relatively simple. A SQL query of the Alias table (DIR_ONLINE_INFO) groups rows by MAILBOX. The AliasNames of the same MAILBOX are concatenated together in a string field. If the MAILBOX is "@connect.yale.edu" it is O365, if it is "@bulldogs.yale.edu" it is Eliapps, and if it is something else it is junk. The trick is then to create SQL clauses that flag primary accounts from secondary accounts, and distinguish Eliapps account that exist alone from Eliapps accounts belonging to someone who also has an O365 mailbox which have to be then assigned to a Contact. If we don't do this processing in SQL where it is easy, it becomes much more difficult in IIQ to know if an incoming Eliapps account record belongs to a Netid who also has an O365 record and therefore correlate it to or create a Contact Identity. If the SQL view has already done that analysis, IIQ can implement the correlation that the SQL has pre-processed.
There is some malformed, obsolete, or broken data in the The Alias table has bad data. The code will be robust against data errors and not allow them to interfere with the mail delivery of properly configured addresses. However, if the Alias table currently contains an Alias that points to a non-existent email account, and the new code discards that alias because a bad MAILBOX value means there is no object to which the aliases can be attached, then mail to the same bad alias will still bounce, but it will just bounce differentlyWe will remediate some problems and ignore issues that cause no problem for data delivery. The following list includes all the the things that need to be remediated, and some other interesting problems:
- There were 555 users with O365 accounts and MAILBOX values of "AliasName@connect.yale.edu". They are to be changed to the more standard "Netid@connect.yale.edu".
- There are Email Aliases to "Netid@connect.yale.edu" where the Netid User object does not appear to have an O365 mail account. Currently the Mail Relays forward mail to these addresses to Exchange Online, which bounces them because they have neither an O365 mail account nor a TargetAddress. This will continue to happen, although the new code will populate the MailNickName and ProxyAddresses field in Azure AD, whereas the old AD Daily Updater code would not populate these fields because the on premise AD did not have a RemoteMailbox indicator. We do not expect to continue to support the unnecessary on premise Exchange just to maintain the RemoteMailbox concept in the on premise AD. Although we have changed fields, the behavior where Exchange Online bounces the mail should be identical because the fields changed do not affect it.
We synchronize the on premise Local AD to the Azure AD. IIQ must provision changes to the Local AD and wait for the synchronization to occur within the next half hour. The only field in Azure AD that can be provisioned directly is UPN.
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