Was the Aliases settings page changed? - Page 2

Terry · 6 Apr 2023, 06:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nudge

Why do they keep messing around with this stuff ! Some of these changes are a massive hassle. Why can't they just leave things alone instead of changing things that already work well and don't need fixing ?

They must be getting bored

Fenman · 6 Apr 2023, 03:35 PM

From their blogs, they seem to have created an internal culture of excessive praise and aggrandisement for making trivial and/or confusing changes.

Avion · 6 Apr 2023, 04:07 PM

Quote:

They must be getting bored

Quote:

From their blogs, they seem to have created an internal culture of excessive praise and aggrandisement for making trivial and/or confusing changes.

From the ridiculous to the sublime.

Fenman · 6 Apr 2023, 05:37 PM

Perhaps we being ungrateful. The Fastmail team is thrilled to reveal the extensive work they have put into this work and the 'advantages' thereof to our workflow.

Manage Your Email Addresses In One Place with Settings Update

hadaso · 7 Apr 2023, 06:42 AM

To me it doesn't look as "my email addresses in one place".
In "Team addresses" I find 33 "addresses" (formerly aliases), 5 of them deliver to 3 other family members, and the other 28 (including 4 catchall aliases) delver to my account.
In "My addresses" I find many addresses. Many of them are my former "Identities", but it seems that at least some of them were created for aliases that I only use nowadays in URLs in some web pages I created in the past using the file storage and I don't really need to have "sending identities" related to, and some addresses that were only used for receiving and I never intended to send from. I think in the past I deleted some Identities that were automatically created for some aliases I created with no intent to use for sending, just for receiving, and perhaps some of them were recreated now or sometime in the past.
Well, I really need to delete some of them, but with the new way things are arranged and named, I am not sure that deleting a "My email address" (what used to be a "sending identity" would not also delete also the related "team address" (formerly alias). In the past it was obvious that these are independent objects.

xyzzy · 7 Apr 2023, 01:08 PM

FWIW I find that the closest approximation to get the "My email addresses" to look like the "old" Sending Identities is to set the Sending Identities sort to Show All and Status External.

Unfortunately should you look at the Sending Identities on a mobile device (using the FM app or a browser - on the iPhone at least but I assume Android too) there is no sort column so everything shows there.

Terry · 8 Apr 2023, 03:09 PM

I suppose in a few weeks teams will incur a cost....

Oh well I suppose I can now change my name to Team Terry

hadaso · 10 Apr 2023, 09:42 AM

There's a help page on the new "My email addresses" screen here: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/a.../6400028063119 (it the "learn more" link from that screen).
It explains some but not all of what I see in that screen.
For example, the "status" of dsome of my email addresses is "Catch-all" and this status is not mentioned in the help page (openning that address for editing provides an explanation). These are sending identities I set for some of my email addresses that are receiving mail through a catch-all alias.
More confusing is that they seem to get it wrong: I have an catch-all alias for *@mydomain.tld, and I have another alias for bounce@mydomain.tld. They are both now in the least of "Team addresses", and the setting seem to be unchanged from what they were when they were called "aliases".
I also had a sending identity set for bounce@mydomain.tld. now it is called a "My email address", and the settings seem to be unchanged from when it was called a "sending identity".
When I click "Edit" for this address, I see this message: "This address can send and/or receive mail because *@mydomain.tld delivers mail to you."
Now this is not supposed to work this way, because a particular alias under a domain is supposed to override catch-all alias settings for the domain.
I have other aliases under the same domain and they are not detected as being derived from a catch-all.
Another thing I see when I open this bounce@mydomain.tld for editing is "To send as bounce@mydomain.tld you must first verify that you own this address."
The help page says this is the case for addresses whose status is "Verify" and not other statuses. There is no indication that the address needs to be verified unless one opens it to editing. Also it is an address in a domain that I host in Fastmail so I don't see why it needs further verification that it is "my address". I pointed the NS records of the domain to Fastmail's NS servers so it's pretty good verification.
Another address's status is "Blocked"/ The help page says this means "This email address sends mail through Fastmail, but has been set to reject incoming mail:. That's correct. It is an alias in one of Fastmail's domains. Actually it's the first alias I used when I became a user of FastMail more the 20 years ago (but not 20 years ago today...) I disabled that alias a long time ago, and that is still it's status in the "Team addresses" screen. So it's supposed to not receive any mail but to be available for sending mail, however, when opening the email address for editing it says that it needs to be verified to be able to send. So the "Blocked" status is wrong, and the correct status is apparently "Verify", and there's nothing to suggest that verification is needed until one decides to try to edit the address. But then again, why would an alias in a Fastmail owned domain that points at a particular user's account need to be verified by that user?
I haven't yet tried to "verify" those addresses, but I guess that this involves having them receive email, and since they are blocked addresses they do not receive email (especially the bounce@ address whose sole purpose is to serve as a sender's address that doesn't receive replies.
I don't really understand the purpose and function of the "Team addresses" screen. I I want to add a user I use the "user management" screen. Unlike the "My email address" screen the "Team addresses" screen contains no link to a help page.
Back to "My email addresses": there's one email address that's certainly "mine": the one I use for corresponding with family and friends. Also the catch-all for my domain. These are labelled as "Shared". Two other addresses are also labelled as "shared": aliases in Fastmail owned domains that I use as a whois contact and with my domain registrar (so they still work if there's a problem with the domain). When opening any of them for editing it says: "This is a shared address. Messages sent to this address will go to you and other members of your team". However, these are not shared with anyone but myself. The only thing that makes them "shared" is that they are set to deliver a copy to a gmail account for backup (so they are available in case Fastmail is down; I don't recall ever using this backup option' except perhaps when Fastmail was down for several days more than a decade ago). They are certainly not shared with any other user within my Fastmail account.

One more thing: any address can have a "Nickname" (in the advanced settings for each address). It not new. It was so with sending identities. In the past (perhaps distant past) it was very useful because it appeared in the identity drop-down menu in the compose screen and helped in choosing the correct identity. That list was sorted by the nickname and I used it to control the order in that drop-down menu. This functionality was lost some time in the past. Now the nickname has very little use, and there seems to be no way to make the drop-down menu of identities (that is' of my email addresses) sort in a useful way. I need to scroll down quite a lot to find addresses I use often. If anyone has an idea how to force it to sort in a desired way I would like to hear about it.

Probably with time I would get used to the new setup. Nothing in my daily usage has change. Those addresses that require verification are ones i haven't used for many years. And while in the past I understood completely what an alias was and what an identity was, and where to deal with which, now it is less clear what is the difference between "my addresses" and my addresses that are classified "team addresses".
BTW, I never liked the term "alias". I always thought it was just an email address, and I didn't like the distinction between the user's main address (used to login) and the other addresses (the aliases) that was in Fastmail's early days. It is more correct to use the name "email address" than "alias"/
However, sending identities are not the same as email addresses: there's no reason to force a user to use different email addresses if the user want's to use just one address, and to identify as say "Bob" when corresponding with friends, as "Bobby" when corresponding with close family and as "Mr's Robert Smith, attorney at law" when corresponding with clients, and as "Robert Smith" when corresponding with others.

Terry · 10 Apr 2023, 09:56 AM

But why did they change it and make it harder to use and no public comment on how to use it, we have to find it hidden up somewhere in Fastmail.

It's not a Team spirit is Fastmail.

Terry · 10 Apr 2023, 10:02 AM

Edit.....000000

xyzzy · 10 Apr 2023, 06:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Terry

But why did they change it and make it harder to use and no public comment on how to use it, we have to find it hidden up somewhere in Fastmail.

I think FM's "traditional" way of doing things is to try new stuff in the beta and wait for comments there. Problem with that technique is (a) I suspect most users don't know about the beta and (b) even if they do won't take the chance of the beta screwing up their account so bad that the release version no longer works and may have to revert to a backup.

I haven't been using the beta so this teams stuff unfortunately came a complete surprise to me. It was in the beta wasn't it?

xyzzy · 10 Apr 2023, 06:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hadaso

These are sending identities I set for some of my email addresses that are receiving mail through a catch-all alias.

I define all my catch-all's with deliver to's so "My email addresses" lists those with status "external".

Quote:

But then again, why would an alias in a Fastmail owned domain that points at a particular user's account need to be verified by that user?

I think that's my question too. For one of FM's own created aliases it should never need verification - enabled or disabled. And it knows this too since the " "My email addresses" status for one of these disabled aliases becomes a "Verify" button to verify it bypassing the send verification code procedure. I submitted a ticket for this.

Quote:

I don't really understand the purpose and function of the "Team addresses" screen. I I want to add a user I use the "user management" screen.

But if I want to add an alias and need the settings provided for aliases (e.g., deliver to). I don't have any other users on my "team" so the only user on my "User management" is me.

Quote:

And while in the past I understood completely what an alias was and what an identity was, and where to deal with which, now it is less clear what is the difference between "my addresses" and my addresses that are classified "team addresses".

I suggested earlier in post #21 that a good approximation is to interpret "team addresses" as the "old" aliases settings and "my addresses" sorted as "all/external" as the "old" sending identities.

hbs · 10 Apr 2023, 09:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hadaso

Now the nickname has very little use, and there seems to be no way to make the drop-down menu of identities (that is' of my email addresses) sort in a useful way.

You can still sort your email addresses by the nickname just by prepending some sort criterion.

I resorted to numbers. Something like that - not exactly eye candy but it gets the job done:

Code:

11 — <my.name@domain1.tld>
12 — mail@domain1.tld
15 — <*@domain1.tld>
16 — <*@sub.domain1.tld>
21 — <my.name@domain2.tld>
22 — mail@domain2.tld
25 — <*@domain2.tld>
...
41 — <my.user@gmail.com>
42 — <other.user@gmail.com>
43 — third.user@gmail.com
...
81 — <my.alias1@fastmail.com>
82 — <my.alias2@fastmail.com>
83 — <my.alias3@fastmail.net>
...
91 — abuse@domain1.tld
91 — postmaster@domain1.tld
92 — abuse@domain2.tld
92 — postmaster@domain2.tld
99 — myaccount@fastmail.com !!!

In the past, when a line in the drop down menu (Web UI) could be quite wide I had also the name in the nickname. But some time ago a UI change made the drop down list narrower and lines with too much text will now be wrapped.

I don't like that, so I omitted the name from the nickname and since then I use angle brackets. If an email address is enclosed in angle brackets it tells me the address has a name assigned to it. Otherwise there is no name.

hadaso · 11 Apr 2023, 06:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xyzzy

I think FM's "traditional" way of doing things is to try new stuff in the beta and wait for comments there. Problem with that technique is (a) I suspect most users don't know about the beta and (b) even if they do won't take the chance of the beta screwing up their account so bad that the release version no longer works and may have to revert to a backup.

I haven't been using the beta so this teams stuff unfortunately came a complete surprise to me. It was in the beta wasn't it?

It was in beta quite some time. I use beta almost every day, and I saw this, but haven't looked for bugs. Since I very rarely change my setup nowadays, it had no real effect on my everyday usage. I saw that things changed places and I compared with the old setup (alises and identities screens) and I saw that nothing is missing, just shuffled around, so I figured that when the time comes I would just have to look around and find the things in their new places. Maybe I even provided some feedback. I don't remember now if I did on this change, and I didn't have time to do more than verify that non of my info (aliases and identities) got lost. Perhaps if there was some discussion here I would have looked at more particular things like I do now.

hadaso · 11 Apr 2023, 07:19 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by xyzzy

I define all my catch-all's with deliver to's so "My email addresses" lists those with status "external".

I have four catch-all aliases. All of them are defined with "deliver to" but non of them have an identity that is classified with status "external".
Two of them are of the type *@domain.x delivers to *@domain.y, and these have no corresponding identity.
One of them is a leftover from some experimentation that I should probably delete (and also delete the corresponding domain and identity). It is set to deliver to my inbox (to the address used to login to fastmail) and it's status is "active"/

One of them is for the only domain I use regularly for correspondence. It delivers to my Fastmail inbox (that is to the address I use to login) and also to a backup Gmail address. The corresponding catch-all identity's status is "shared+active" (and not external). I guess the additional Gmail target makes it "shared with other members of my team".
I have one catch-all identity that is listed with status "external" but it is not related to a catch-all alias, but rather an external domain (it is a catch-all alias for a domain that belongs to spamgourmet. It was useful for sending using my spamgourmet addresses before verification was required. Now it needs verification, though the status field doesn't reveal this requirement, and it is unverifiable since I cannot receive mail at a random address in the domain, only in a random address in some huge subset of those addresses).
I have three identities listed with status "external" in the list of "My email addresses". Two of them are really external: one is the above dysfunctional catch-all. The other is my email address at my employer (that was easily verified).
The third one is mistakenly classified as "external": it is a subdomain address in a domain of mine that is hosted by Fastmail. When editing the identity ("email address") there's a message saying: "You added this address to your account, but it doesn’t go directly to you". THis is not entirely true. I sent myself a test email from gmail and it arrived at my account. What really happens is this: that address is VeryLongLocalPart@dont.save.contact.mydomain.tld.
It is received and sent my inbox at Fastmail because there is a catch-all alias *@mydomain.tld that delivered to my inbox (that is the address I use to login).
I have other identities for subdomain addresses in that domain, and their status is "catch-all" and the message that goes with them is "This address can send and/or receive mail because *@domain.tld delivers mail to you". So apparently having higher level subdomains fools the detection of the address's status.

6 Apr 2023, 03:35 PM	#17
Fenman Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: UK (East Anglia) Posts: 737	From their blogs, they seem to have created an internal culture of excessive praise and aggrandisement for making trivial and/or confusing changes.

6 Apr 2023, 05:37 PM	#19
Fenman Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: UK (East Anglia) Posts: 737	Perhaps we being ungrateful. The Fastmail team is thrilled to reveal the extensive work they have put into this work and the 'advantages' thereof to our workflow. Manage Your Email Addresses In One Place with Settings Update

7 Apr 2023, 06:42 AM	#20
hadaso The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Holon, Israel. Posts: 4,848	To me it doesn't look as "my email addresses in one place". In "Team addresses" I find 33 "addresses" (formerly aliases), 5 of them deliver to 3 other family members, and the other 28 (including 4 catchall aliases) delver to my account. In "My addresses" I find many addresses. Many of them are my former "Identities", but it seems that at least some of them were created for aliases that I only use nowadays in URLs in some web pages I created in the past using the file storage and I don't really need to have "sending identities" related to, and some addresses that were only used for receiving and I never intended to send from. I think in the past I deleted some Identities that were automatically created for some aliases I created with no intent to use for sending, just for receiving, and perhaps some of them were recreated now or sometime in the past. Well, I really need to delete some of them, but with the new way things are arranged and named, I am not sure that deleting a "My email address" (what used to be a "sending identity" would not also delete also the related "team address" (formerly alias). In the past it was obvious that these are independent objects.

7 Apr 2023, 01:08 PM	#21
xyzzy Essential Contributor Join Date: May 2018 Posts: 477	FWIW I find that the closest approximation to get the "My email addresses" to look like the "old" Sending Identities is to set the Sending Identities sort to Show All and Status External. Unfortunately should you look at the Sending Identities on a mobile device (using the FM app or a browser - on the iPhone at least but I assume Android too) there is no sort column so everything shows there. Last edited by xyzzy : 7 Apr 2023 at 05:37 PM.

8 Apr 2023, 03:09 PM	#22
Terry The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: VK4 Posts: 3,026	I suppose in a few weeks teams will incur a cost.... Oh well I suppose I can now change my name to Team Terry

10 Apr 2023, 09:42 AM	#23
hadaso The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: Holon, Israel. Posts: 4,848	There's a help page on the new "My email addresses" screen here: https://www.fastmail.help/hc/en-us/a.../6400028063119 (it the "learn more" link from that screen). It explains some but not all of what I see in that screen. For example, the "status" of dsome of my email addresses is "Catch-all" and this status is not mentioned in the help page (openning that address for editing provides an explanation). These are sending identities I set for some of my email addresses that are receiving mail through a catch-all alias. More confusing is that they seem to get it wrong: I have an catch-all alias for @mydomain.tld, and I have another alias for bounce@mydomain.tld. They are both now in the least of "Team addresses", and the setting seem to be unchanged from what they were when they were called "aliases". I also had a sending identity set for bounce@mydomain.tld. now it is called a "My email address", and the settings seem to be unchanged from when it was called a "sending identity". When I click "Edit" for this address, I see this message: "This address can send and/or receive mail because @mydomain.tld delivers mail to you." Now this is not supposed to work this way, because a particular alias under a domain is supposed to override catch-all alias settings for the domain. I have other aliases under the same domain and they are not detected as being derived from a catch-all. Another thing I see when I open this bounce@mydomain.tld for editing is "To send as bounce@mydomain.tld you must first verify that you own this address." The help page says this is the case for addresses whose status is "Verify" and not other statuses. There is no indication that the address needs to be verified unless one opens it to editing. Also it is an address in a domain that I host in Fastmail so I don't see why it needs further verification that it is "my address". I pointed the NS records of the domain to Fastmail's NS servers so it's pretty good verification. Another address's status is "Blocked"/ The help page says this means "This email address sends mail through Fastmail, but has been set to reject incoming mail:. That's correct. It is an alias in one of Fastmail's domains. Actually it's the first alias I used when I became a user of FastMail more the 20 years ago (but not 20 years ago today...) I disabled that alias a long time ago, and that is still it's status in the "Team addresses" screen. So it's supposed to not receive any mail but to be available for sending mail, however, when opening the email address for editing it says that it needs to be verified to be able to send. So the "Blocked" status is wrong, and the correct status is apparently "Verify", and there's nothing to suggest that verification is needed until one decides to try to edit the address. But then again, why would an alias in a Fastmail owned domain that points at a particular user's account need to be verified by that user? I haven't yet tried to "verify" those addresses, but I guess that this involves having them receive email, and since they are blocked addresses they do not receive email (especially the bounce@ address whose sole purpose is to serve as a sender's address that doesn't receive replies. I don't really understand the purpose and function of the "Team addresses" screen. I I want to add a user I use the "user management" screen. Unlike the "My email address" screen the "Team addresses" screen contains no link to a help page. Back to "My email addresses": there's one email address that's certainly "mine": the one I use for corresponding with family and friends. Also the catch-all for my domain. These are labelled as "Shared". Two other addresses are also labelled as "shared": aliases in Fastmail owned domains that I use as a whois contact and with my domain registrar (so they still work if there's a problem with the domain). When opening any of them for editing it says: "This is a shared address. Messages sent to this address will go to you and other members of your team". However, these are not shared with anyone but myself. The only thing that makes them "shared" is that they are set to deliver a copy to a gmail account for backup (so they are available in case Fastmail is down; I don't recall ever using this backup option' except perhaps when Fastmail was down for several days more than a decade ago). They are certainly not shared with any other user within my Fastmail account. One more thing: any address can have a "Nickname" (in the advanced settings for each address). It not new. It was so with sending identities. In the past (perhaps distant past) it was very useful because it appeared in the identity drop-down menu in the compose screen and helped in choosing the correct identity. That list was sorted by the nickname and I used it to control the order in that drop-down menu. This functionality was lost some time in the past. Now the nickname has very little use, and there seems to be no way to make the drop-down menu of identities (that is' of my email addresses) sort in a useful way. I need to scroll down quite a lot to find addresses I use often. If anyone has an idea how to force it to sort in a desired way I would like to hear about it. Probably with time I would get used to the new setup. Nothing in my daily usage has change. Those addresses that require verification are ones i haven't used for many years. And while in the past I understood completely what an alias was and what an identity was, and where to deal with which, now it is less clear what is the difference between "my addresses" and my addresses that are classified "team addresses". BTW, I never liked the term "alias". I always thought it was just an email address, and I didn't like the distinction between the user's main address (used to login) and the other addresses (the aliases) that was in Fastmail's early days. It is more correct to use the name "email address" than "alias"/ However, sending identities are not the same as email addresses: there's no reason to force a user to use different email addresses if the user want's to use just one address, and to identify as say "Bob" when corresponding with friends, as "Bobby" when corresponding with close family and as "Mr's Robert Smith, attorney at law" when corresponding with clients, and as "Robert Smith" when corresponding with others.

10 Apr 2023, 09:56 AM	#24
Terry The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: VK4 Posts: 3,026	But why did they change it and make it harder to use and no public comment on how to use it, we have to find it hidden up somewhere in Fastmail. It's not a Team spirit is Fastmail.

10 Apr 2023, 10:02 AM	#25
Terry The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: VK4 Posts: 3,026	Edit.....000000