One of the primary reasons for having an electronic directory
server is to facilitate contact (including the sending and receiving
of electronic mail) among members of the Miami community and between
Miami students, staff and faculty and their colleagues around the
world.  Miami University's Directory Server includes a very specific
data field for individuals to designate the address at which they
prefer to receive electronic mail.  The address can be any valid
e-mail address at Miami or elsewhere.
 
     Designating a preferred e-mail address in one central location,
and setting forwarding addresses appropriately, allows an individual
to easily control (and change as necessary or desirable) where their
electronic mail is delivered.  It also allows their correspondents
to use a simplified (and more easily remembered) e-mail address.
 
     Miami University's Directory Server uses the same unique
identifier used to log into student, staff and faculty accounts on
the University's centrally-managed multi-user computing systems,
MiamiU (the IBM VM/CMS system) and MiaVX1 (the DEC OpenVMS system
in Oxford).  The unique identifier consists of up to six characters
of an individual's last name, followed by the first and middle
initials, and in some cases, one or more numerals to distinguish
among individuals whose names are similar.
 
     Once an individual has registered a preferred e-mail address
with Miami University's Directory Server, he or she can receive
electronic mail addressed simply:
 
                         <uniqueid>@MUOhio.Edu
 
where <uniqueid> is an actual unique identifier.  For instance,
Josephine Q Public's unique identifier at Miami might be PublicJQ,
her six-character last name, followed by her first and middle
initials.  Once she has registered a preferred e-mail address,
her simplified e-mail address would become:
 
                           [log in to unmask]
 
When incoming e-mail is received at MUOhio.Edu, Miami University's
Directory Server is consulted to see where PublicJQ prefers to
receive e-mail, and then routes the incoming mail to that preferred
address, quickly, easily, and transparently to both the sender and the
recipient.
 
--
 
                           John B Harlan
        Campus Wide Information Systems (CWIS) Coordinator
                    Miami University (Ohio USA)
                        [log in to unmask]