Understanding the Purpose of Post Offices

The post office serves as an administrative unit for a group of users and is used for addressing messages. Each GroupWise user has an address that consists of a user ID, the user's post office name, the GroupWise domain name, and, optionally, an Internet domain name.

The following diagram illustrates the logical organization of a GroupWise domain with multiple post offices. The two post offices belong to the domain. All of the objects under each post office belong to that post office.

As illustrated above, each post office must have at least one Post Office Agent (POA) running for it. The POA delivers messages to users' mailboxes and performs a variety of post office and mailbox maintenance activities.

When you add a new post office, you must link it to a domain. The link defines how messages travel between the post office and its domain. Links are discussed in detail in Managing the Links between Domains and Post Offices.

Physically, a post office consists of a set of directories that house all the information stored in the post office. To view the structure of the post office directory, see "Post Office Directory" in GroupWise 6.5 Troubleshooting 3: Message Flow and Directory Structure. The post office directory contains users' mailboxes and messages, as well as other vital information. For an overview, see Information Stored in the Post Office.