Email Address Format
Stax-managed AWS accounts require email addresses. It is important to ensure that these addresses adhere to both AWS and Stax requirements.
If your AWS account ownership model is a model with any customer-owned AWS accounts, Stax requires an email address template to be specified as part of onboarding.
This template is used when determining the email addresses for AWS accounts Stax creates. The email address template must provide room for a Stax-generated account identifier in the format of a UUID. See Why must the UUID be used? below for more information on the UUID.
The email address template provided should also exist within your organization and be monitored to ensure that emails dispatched to these addresses can be acted upon as appropriate. Typically, a shared mailbox or distribution group is utilized for this purpose.
The recommended email address format is aws+${Stax::AccountId}@example.com. This would result in AWS accounts being created with email addresses such as aws+7e196280-1157-45e3-824a-9f6aef9946b8@example.com.
Placeholders
The following placeholders can be used as part of the email address template:
| Placeholder | Description | Example |
|---|---|---|
| ${Stax::AccountId} | Mandatory. The Stax-generated UUID for the AWS account | 7e196280-1157-45e3-824a-9f6aef9946b8 |
| ${Stax::StaxOrgAlias} | Optional. The organization ID of the account's Stax tenancy | your-company |
Considerations
When determining the template for your organization, consider the following limitations:
- AWS limits the maximum length of these email addresses to 64 characters
- The UUID generated by Stax has a length of 36 characters, leaving 28 characters for other parts of the email address
- The UUID generated by Stax will not be known ahead of time, so using something like the convention of SMTP sub-addressing supported by many vendors is encouraged (Microsoft 365, Gmail)
- AWS account number is unable to be used in the email address template because the email address must exist before the account can be created
Why must the UUID be used?
When an AWS account is created, a unique email address must be provided to AWS for the account's root user credential. As the AWS account ID is not determined until the account creation process is undertaken, Stax is unable to pre-emptively enter the AWS account ID into the email address template, and must instead use its UUID identifier for the account, which is generated ahead of time.
Change Email Address Format
Changing the email address format of your AWS Accounts is a manual process, so it's recommended to carefully consider the format when commencing the Stax provisioning process.
If the email address format is to be changed after your Stax tenancy is first provisioned, several steps must be completed:
- Inform Stax (via a support case) of the new email address format. The support team will update the format so that any new accounts provisioned within your Stax tenancy will use this format.
- Update each AWS account's email address. If your account ownership model is one where the reseller owns all accounts, you must raise a support case to have Stax complete this task on your behalf. Under other ownership models, you will need to access each AWS account's root user credential and change the email address to the new format.
When implementing a new format, ensure it meets all details covered in the considerations above.