Introduction

There are several scenarios where you may want a dedicated email address for some purpose. This may be:

There are solutions to this which are explained below. Each have their own advantages and disadvantages.

To request any of these, email

Shared Mailboxes

Shared mailboxes have an email address that you can receive email to and send email from.
Multiple users can access this mailbox
Shared email addresses are limited to 8 characters.
Your personal email and your shared email will be kept entirely separate - it is like having a secondary email account
This is a simple solution when you want a general email inbox for a group of users
You will see the additional mailbox as an additional account in Outlook, below your main account
Takes a few days to set up
Membership must be managed by IS&T

Moira lists forward email to another email address (or multiple email addresses). For example, email sent to your-list-name@mit.edu can be forwarded to your-keberos@mit.edu.
These can be thought of as an alias.
Mail can be forwarded to any domain, such as @gmail.com, @yahoo.com, etc... It does not need to be an @mit.edu email address
There is a 320-character limit for Moira list email addresses
Very easy to set up (takes a few minutes)
Membership can be managed by you or self-managed.

Because email sent to the Moira list will be forwarded to your personal email account, your Moira list email and your personal email may become commingled. You can configure Outlook rules to automatically organize Moira list emails into folders.
Sending email FROM a Moira list is a little tricky.
- Requires the use of a separate email client
- Replies are stored in the local device (replies do not sync across devices)
- You can't send replies from the web/mobile
- See this KB article for setup instructions.

A third approach is to use a ticketing system, such as ServiceNow
Ticketing systems are superior when you expect to receive a lot of requests that have tasks associated with them (E.g. You are being asked to provide support to a group, you need to coordinate reservations, etc...)
Emails are sent to a Moira group email address and processed by the ticketing system. The system then notifies you about the inquiry (and any replies to the thread) via email.
You can reply to notification emails from the ticketing system just as you would respond to a user directly and they will receive the email
All related emails are associated with the specific ticket
All correspondence can be viewed on the ServiceNow website, and you can made additional notes that are not visible to the client
Tickets can have statuses (Open, On Hold, Closed...) as well as custom categories (Work Request/AV, Work Request/Printer Setup, etc...)
Provides substantial reporting capabilities (See the number of requests, when they come in, the type of requests, average time to resolution...)
Membership can be managed by you; typically managed by CRE IT

Read more about MIT's ServiceNow Ticketing system here. You may also want to watch the first several minutes of this training video which has a brief overview on ticketing systems.

A Contact Relationship Management (CRM) system is used to keep a history of interactions your organization has with individuals and organizations
- Interactions can include emails, phone calls, events they have attended, donations they have made, social media posts they have interacted with, and more
Similar to a ticketing system, but more focused on the relationship you have with an individual as opposed to a task-based workflow
Provides substantial reporting data
Expected to be available sometime in 2024-2025