Automatically forward Internet mail to internal users?

[kathryn]

Good afternoon, all.

Here is our problem. We have 600 branches who do not, and will not, have access to Internet email. They can receive internal email from each other and from headquarters.

The branches do have access to select sites on the Internet and can order items from our vendors. When our vendors want to respond, we want to have the vendors use one email address here at HQ and then forward the email to the appropriate branch.

My question is this:
Can I write some code which queries the body of an incoming message to see if the message contains any of the branch codes (each of our branches has a distinct 5 character code)? If it does I want to forward the message to that branch. Our branch email addresses have a standard naming convention, so creating the email address will be easy.

Has anyone ever done this?

As a bonus question, the list of valid branches resides in a SQL database on another, accessible server. Any way to use the data there in the query?

Right now, we are creating individual rules, but I gotta think that writing a script would be easier, more maintainable.

Any ideas, references, resources, or war stories would be greatly appreciated. Kathryn

 

[iggystar]

If you know any Unix you'd probably be better off just having Exchange send this to a unix box and then writing a script there to forward the mail.

I've never done this exact task in unix but using perl it would be pretty easy. It'd even be pretty easy with a shell script.

Doing it through exchange I wouldn't even know where to begin. I know it can be done....but I wouldn't even know how to start.

So if you know Unix and PERL that'd be what I would do.