Google Apps offers both e-mail and domain aliasing for Gmail. If you’re like me and set up nicknames and then sent one of your newly set up aliases a test e-mail from within your account, you may be scratching your head. I found documentation and additional searching to be somewhat unclear, so let me explain how it works.
Google’s feature for e-mail aliases is referred to as nicknames, although sometimes referred to as aliases in their documentation. You add nicknames to an individual’s account by clicking on user accounts and then the individual account. Scroll down until you come across Nicknames. Adding nicknames is simple but the way in which they function is unclear, mainly due to the way in which they appear in the interface. Nicknames are always created using the default domain, but they will also work with domain aliases without any additional setup.
My initial thought after creating a nickname was that it could only be used with the default domain. After all, when I set up nicknames they were explicitly associated with my default domain and the interface listed only my username as a nickname for domain aliases. Since I had doubts, I tested the newly created nicknames by e-mailing myself from within my account. Nothing showed up in my inbox after sending the test, so I started to question my understanding of nicknames. Just to make sure, because I like to doublecheck things, I sent the same test from my ISP e-mail account. I checked my Gmail account and there waited my test sent from my ISP account. Puzzled as to why my initial tests did not work, I started checking all the folders and labels that I had set up. That’s when I realized my initial test bypassed my inbox and could be found in All Mail already marked as read.
It would be great if Google Apps listed nicknames in a more descriptive manner that conveys their functionality, especially across domain aliases. Nonetheless, I recently moved to Google Apps and have had a very positive experience since understanding Google’s way of doing things.