Identify the Recipients and the Formats They Prefer
Your first step is to figure out who the key recipients are and what formats are appropriate for them. This is actually not as great a task as it seems it would be. Right off the bat, you can disregard the 80 percent of recipients for whom the format isn't significant, whose domains who can generally accept either HTML, rich text, or plain text formats.
Here's what you need to know at this stage: which domains must you send HTML mail to? Those are the domains to which you must send messages using the Asian characters. At Bigcompany.com you may need to communicate with a large number of domains: subsidiaries, suppliers, and an indeterminate number of Asian customers using HTML messages.
What this tells you is that it's going to be difficult at best to isolate a specific group of domains to send HTML messages to. So let's look at the other end of the question: which domains must not receive HTML messages? This turns out to be a somewhat easier question. It's really only the domains of a handful of mailing lists (e.g., listserve.com, mailist.net, and bizchatlist.com) that Bigcompany.com wants to restrict to plain text.
Implement the Restrictions
Now that you've isolated which domains you need to restrict, it's time to implement those restrictions:
- Go to the Microsoft Exchange Administrator console and navigate to the Internet Mail Service connector in the Connections group.
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Figure 1. The IMC's Internet Mail tab (Click to enlarge)
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- Double-click the service to get to the properties page and then go to the Internet Mail tab (see Figure 1).
- At this point, make sure that under the "Attachments (Outbound)" section the MIME radio button is checked and both Plain Text and HTML are checked. That will allow Bigcompany.com to send HTML messages to the recipients who need that.
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Figure 2. Multiple domains each have their own setting (Click to enlarge)
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- Click the E-mail Domain button (see Figure 2) to restrict the format for the domains that have mailing lists.
- Click Add to add a new domain to the list. First type listserve.com in the e-mail domain field and then uncheck the HTML checkbox in the Send Attachments Using section (see Figure 3).
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Figure 3. Settings to configure for individual e-mail domain (Click to enlarge)
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- If you like you can also set restrictions on the size of messages being sent to this domain from this screen. Bear in mind that any settings made here will apply to all messages sent through this connector to all addresses at this domain, but they will only apply to this specific domain.
- Repeat this process for each of the other domains that you want to restrict to plain-text messages, before finally clicking Apply and closing the Internet Mail Service connector.
At this point it's a good practice to stop and restart the Internet Mail Service connector to make sure the changes have taken effect.
Now that you're done, your CIO is happy because your users can send HTML messages to their Asian counterparts and clients, your fellow employees are happy because their messages to mailing lists are automatically sent in plain-text format, and you are happy because you can get back to trying to convince your users why hot pink is not an appropriate font color for business messages.
