Remotely creating email accounts?

Question

I'm the admin for a smaller company (with about 40 clients, running mac OS 10.4-10.6), and we are currently in the process of changing our email-setup from one hosted POP3-solution to an IMAP-based mail. Since the level of computer experience for most of the employees is very low, I'm facing the tedious work of setting up their new email accounts manually on each computer. My question is: Is there any way of remotely setting up an email account in Apple Mail on a 10.5-10.6 system (i.e. creating plists, folder structures etc. that can be copied to the correct locations), or is there any command line procedure that will do the job (which in that case can be batched)? I haven't found anything so far, so I'm guessing it's not easily done, but it's worth asking anyway... Thank you / Greger

Answer 1

Assuming that the users already have existing Mail-Accounts you shouldn´t replace folder structures or replace .plists. Instead I´d suggest one (or both) of the following:

1. To make the setup of new accounts a bit more future-proof, you should have a look at Apple´s Guide on how to create Mail Account Bundles. This way, you can tell users in a relatively easy guide on how to setup their accounts, and they only have to type in their e-Mail-Address and Password. Similar to how eg. the GMail-setup works, Mail.app will then look up the incoming and outgoing server names, etc. automatically.

2. Alternatively, you could use AppleScript to set up new Accounts. As a starting point, have a look at the example script Apple provides in /Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts/Create New Mail Account.scpt