The Global Address List, sometimes referred to as the “GAL,” is most commonly identified with Microsoft Exchange. The GAL is essentially a directory service within Enterprise Email that contains a dynamic list of all contact information for every user on your domain. While individual mailboxes are contained within the GAL, Domain Administrators can further manage what’s included in the GAL in order to hide users that may not represent real people, such as any aliases and/or mailing lists.
Contact information for the Global Address List is pulled from the individual account profiles of users. To update your listing, go to your settings area. Under User Settings, go to your Account Profile and edit your information.
Note: If the Global Address List is enabled for your domain, all information you enter into your profile can be seen by all other members of your domain.
Other than the availability of the information within the Global Address List, it functions almost identically as Contacts. The difference is that anything in My Contacts is seen only by you.
Adding/Removing a User From the GAL
Domain Administrators can actively manage the GAL by adding or removing users as needed. As mentioned, it may be worthwhile for a Domain Administrator to limit GAL entries to actual employees or users on the domain, excluding things like aliases or generic mailboxes that are used for departments, such as Billing or HR departments.
To change a user’s GAL setting,, you’ll first want to be logged in as a Domain Admininstrator. From there, do the following:
- Click on the Domain Settings icon.
- Select Accounts from the navigation menu and ensure that the Users tab is highlighted.
- Double click on the user to edit to open their settings.
- On the User card, enable or disable the Show in Global Address List setting as needed.
- Be sure to save the changes.
Global Address List Availability
The GAL is a feature available for any domain that’s added to Enterprise Email. While turned on by default when a domain is created, if Domain Administrators are not able to find the setting for any new or existing users — that is, add or remove the user from the GAL — they’ll want to contact their System Administrator to ensure that the Global Address List is actually enabled for their domain.