IBM BPM, V8.0.1, All platforms > Authoring services in Integration Designer > Services and service-related functions > Access external services with adapters > Configure and using adapters > IBM WebSphere Adapters > Email > Overview of WebSphere Adapter for Email
Technical overview of WebSphere Adapter for Email
WebSphere Adapter for Email enables email connectivity between IBM BPM or WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus and one or more mail servers. The adapter itself is housed within an adapter module created using the external service wizard in IBM Integration Designer. Each module performs an outbound or inbound service, such as retrieving emails from a mail server or sending emails to a group of recipients.
A module encapsulates the service in a reusable unit and consists of both a project in IBM Integration Designer and a unit of deployment which is an enterprise archive (EAR) file to IBM BPM or WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus. The module is packaged and deployed to IBM BPM or WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus as an enterprise archive (EAR) file.
In the simplest implementation, you can use the adapter to send emails to one or more email addresses. This process is referred to as outbound communication because the adapter is part of a module designed to send emails out to a mail server.
You can also use the adapter to poll a mail server for incoming emails, and then send the information found in the email to a service. The service consumes the information forwarded by the adapter to complete a task. This process is called inbound communication.
In more complicated implementations, you use a number of individual modules (designed for inbound and outbound communication) together to initiate an automated flow of operation, and then send an email notification to an email address to confirm that an action is completed. Similarly, you can create an inbound module that listens for incoming email events on the mail server that match certain criteria (for example, e-mails with a specific word in the subject field) and forwards only those email events to the service.
The adapter sends and receives emails to or from different mail servers by using the SMTP email protocol for all outbound communication and either the IMAP or POP3 email protocol for inbound communication. Depending on what inbound protocol your mail server supports, you can select between IMAP and POP3 when you create your inbound module.
- Outbound processing
WebSphere Adapter for Email supports outbound request processing. When the adapter receives a request in the form of a business object from a service, it processes the request and creates an email message. The adapter then sends the email message to a mail server.- Inbound processing
WebSphere Adapter for Email supports inbound processing of email events. Inbound event processing means that the adapter polls the mail server at specified intervals for new emails that are ready for processing. When the adapter detects an event that is ready to be processed, it converts the event data into a business object and sends it to the consuming service.- Business objects
A business object is a structure that consists of data, the action to be performed on the data, and additional instructions, if any, for processing the data. The data can represent anything from a customer record to an email attachment. The adapter uses business objects to either obtain information from an email or to produce an email.- WebSphere Application Server environment variables
WebSphere Application Server environment variables can be used in the external service wizard to specify directory values. You can now change any string property values in inbound and outbound configuration by only changing the environment variables.- The external service wizard
The external service wizard provides a blueprint to create services from existing elements like business objects.