14.5 Renaming Users and Their GroupWise Accounts

When you rename a user, the user’s GroupWise user ID (mailbox ID) changes but the user remains in the same post office. All of the user’s associations remain unchanged. For example, the user retains ownership of any resources and documents while other users who had proxy rights to the user’s mailbox retain proxy rights.

Resolving Addressing Issues Caused By Renaming a User

The user’s new information is immediately replicated to each post office throughout your system so that the GroupWise Address Book contains the user’s updated address. Any user who selects the renamed user from the GroupWise Address Book can successfully send messages to the renamed user.

However, some users might have the user’s old address (GroupWise user ID) in their Frequent Contacts Address Books. In this case, if the sender types the renamed user’s name in the To field instead of selecting it from the Address Book, GroupWise uses the old address stored in the Frequent Contacts Address Book instead of the new address in the GroupWise Address Book. This results in the message being undeliverable. The POA automatically resolves this issue when it performs its nightly user upkeep (see Section 36.4.3, Performing Nightly User Upkeep). During the nightly user upkeep process, the POA ensures that all addresses in a user’s Frequent Contacts Address Book are valid addresses in the GroupWise Address Book.

If you want to ensure that messages sent to the user’s old address are delivered even before the POA cleans up the Frequent Contacts Address Book, you can create a nickname using the old GroupWise user ID. For information about creating a nickname, see Section 14.7.4, Creating a Nickname for a User.