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Our system administration (technology) department manages and maintains our servers and internet systems. It uses the admin namespace. An example is [email protected] .

Our company newly formed an administrative (office) department that handles human resources type tasks. They requested [email protected] for their department email address. For obvious reasons they should not have access to this.

How has everyone else handled this namespace conflict?

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    How has everyone else handled this namespace conflict? - Simple. If the email address is already in use then tell them it's already in use and is not available.
    – joeqwerty
    Nov 9, 2022 at 0:32
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    additionally, since it's HR, you could give them "[email protected]" This is really simple, as joeqwerty said. The one they want is already taken so offer a sensible alternative.
    – mfinni
    Nov 9, 2022 at 1:48
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    HR is a different department at this company.
    – block14
    Nov 9, 2022 at 3:19
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    Regardless of which department is which, the email address is already in use. Offer them an alternative, such as [email protected].
    – joeqwerty
    Nov 9, 2022 at 4:36

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Since emails are not easily reassigned, they can only get a new handle. Two mechanism to get there:

  1. Concede that "admin" is a terribly ambiguous term because every "task" implies the existence of "administrative task concerns".

    Then ask the newly formed department to do the same, so that well beyond email handles they will self-brand/sign as something more specific than "admin". If they do things specific to the office, but are more than the janitor, maybe plain [email protected] will do the trick. In the future, insist on more clearly descriptive namespaces for every newly added name.

  2. Use the opportunity to prepare departments that are expected to grow into managing some of their own tech for stronger namespace separation, e.g. [email protected].

I recommend against exclusively using the second one. Guess what happens if a location-specific department shares a name with a company-level department that eventually forms a location-specific unit. I have done this in a stupid way before and can thus attest that anything that does not minimize potential for future name conflicts and confusion will require disruptive change later on.

Also specifically in email context, you want neither namespace be a prefix of the other, because that will limit the flexibility of sub-addressing suffixes, which are a nice way to allow departments to smoothly adapt to increasing complexity/size/volume. So do not assume that you have found a great solution for the first one when you have merely come up with different abbreviations / extended spellings ("admin" vs "administrative").

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