Separate Sending Accounts from Receiving Accounts from Identities/Aliases
Currently (Evolution 3.32.0 (flatpak git) running on Xubuntu 18.04LTS) Mail Accounts are typically a combination of a Receiving Account and a Sending Account, e.g. imapx+smtp
. In the Account Editor I can configure the Sending Account, the Receiving Account, and some Aliases. The current approach has some unnecessary limitations:
- a single, immutable Sending Account lacks the flexibility for situations such as the use of different SMTP servers based on their availability (or not) at specific locations such as home, work, hotel.
- a single, immutable Full Name limits users in different roles from fine-tuning the use of their real name when they reply in a personal role, vs. "Support" or "Customer Service" when they reply in those other roles.
- The manual choice of Signature in the Message Compositing Window is, at best, error prone. Usually, the signature would be associated with the alias. When the user is acting in its role as customer-facing supporter the signature will be different than when communicating internally.
- Possibly also the selection of identity to use when replying to an email being manual can result in user error. Supporting it with a pre-selected default based on the message being replied to, with the ability to override that logical selection, would reduce the necessity of manual intervention and the possibility of error.
Currently, the only way to get around this flaw is to create multiple Accounts, and to override or set manually the From/Signature dropdown. This is undesirable because of duplication of entries, and unnecessary manual effort.
Suggested solution: Separate three elements: (A) Sending Accounts (B) Receiving Accounts (C) Identities
(A) Sending Accounts
- Mainly the information currently entered in
Account Editor > Sending Email
- With a unique name/identifier (SendID)
(B) Receiving Accounts
- Mainly the information currently entered in
Account Editor > Receiving Email
and inAccount Editor > Receiving Options
plus some ofAccount Editor > Default
- one main identity required/selected
- unlimited identities, identified by the email address (or by another ID if you want to allow for the same email address to have different Full Names entries)
(C) Identities
- Mainly the Required Information and Optional Information from
Account Editor > Identity
- Plus the information from
Composing Messages
andSecurity
- Plus the SendID associated by default
- identified uniquely by the email address
In the message compositing window:
- if the message is a reply and the recipient email address is one that exists in the Identities table, pre-populate From, signature, and selection of Sending Account from the Identity
- else, use From, signature, and Sending Account from the Receiving Account's main identity
- same logic for Compositing Message options and for Security options