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Sending mail from any available mail server

Configure Lotus Connections to perform a lookup of domain namespace (DNS) MX records to retrieve a list of available SMTP servers. If the DNS lookup does not find any available SMTP servers, then e-mail notifications fail to be delivered. If one or more SMTP servers are returned by the lookup, then Lotus Connections attempts to send the e-mail through one, and then the next until the e-mail is sent successfully.


Mail is configured as part of the installation process. Only perform this procedure if you did not enable mail during the installation or you want to change the mail configuration.

You can choose to have Lotus Connections perform a DNS lookup of multiple SMTP server to find one that is available to send the message or you can configure notifications to be sent from a single, dedicated SMTP server. If you are interested in the latter configuration, see Sending mail from a dedicated mail server. If you choose to enable mail from any available server, make sure your DNS is configured with valid MX records to ensure that available SMTP servers can be found.


To configure mail to be sent from any available server...

  1. Open a command window, and then start the wsadmin command line tool. See Starting wsadmin for more details.

  2. Access the Lotus Connections configuration files:

    • Single server: 

        execfile("connectionsConfig.py")

  3. Cluster: 

      execfile("WAS_HOME/profiles/Dmgr01/config/bin_lc_admin/
 "connectionsConfig.py")

  4. Check out the notification-config.xml file... 

      LCConfigService.checkOutNotificationConfig("<temp_dir>","cell_name")

    where <temp_dir> is a temporary and cell_name is the WebSphere Application Server cell to which you installed the feature for which you are enabling mail.

    To enable mail for all of the features and if you installed Lotus Connections into multiple WebSphere Application Server profiles, for example: Activities is installed on AppSrv01, Blogs is installed on AppSrv02, and so on), then there is a notification-config.xml file for each component. If you used this type of deployment, perform these steps to edit the notification-config.xml file associated with each WebSphere Application Server profile.

  5. From the temporary to which you checked out the notification-config.xml file, open it in a text editor.

  6. Search for the <emailChannelConfig> element, and then change the value of the <useJavaMailProvider> element from true to false: 

      <useJavaMailProvider>false</useJavaMailProvider>

  7. Remove the punctuation commenting out the <smtpJNDILookup> element by removing the !-- from the opening element and -- from the closing element. For example, change the following XML markup: 

      <!--smtpJNDILookup>
...
</smtpJNDILookup-->

    to the following markup: 

      <smtpJNDILookup>
...
</smtpJNDILookup>

  8. Set the value of the <smtpJNDILookupURL> element within the <smtpJNDILookup> XML block to a valid DNS lookup Web address for your environment.

    For example, the following Web address performs a lookup of MX records for the acme.com domain using the default DNS server on the system on which Lotus Connections is running: 

      dns:///acme.com

    This value performs the same lookup on a specific DNS server that has an IP address of 192.168.0.2. 

      dns://192.168.0.2/acme.com

  9. Configure or comment out any of the remaining properties in the <smtpJNDILookup> element block as needed for your environment. Some of the elements for which you can specify values are defined as follows:

      <authEntry>

      Specifies a WebSphere managed Java™ 2 Connector alias that specifies the username and password to use when connecting to an SMTP server requiring authentication.

      <javamail>

      Specifies valid JavaMail properties. For example: 

        <javamail>
  <property name="mail.debug">false</property>
  <property name="mail.smtp.connectiontimeout">120000</property>
  <property name="mail.smtp.timeout">120000</property>
  <property name="mail.smtp.port">465</property>
  <property name="mail.smtp.socketFactory.port">465</property>
  <property 
   name="mail.smtp.socketFactory.class">javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory
  </property>
  <property name="mail.smtp.socketFactory.fallback">false</property>
</javamail>

    The smtp properties configure a secure connection to the SMTP server using SSL. The time out properties define the amount of time for the notification to wait for the server tocomplete the request. If the time limit is reached, an exception is written to the server log, and an error is displayed to the Activities user that requested the notification. These properties prevent resources from being consumed in the event that the SMTP server is unavailable. The time interval is specified in milliseconds. A value of 120,000 is two minutes. See the JavaMail documentation for more information about these properties.

  10. The <maxRecipients> element defines the maximum number of people to whom you can send a notification at one time. The default value for this element is 50, but you can change it. 

      <maxRecipients>50</maxRecipients>

  11. Save and close the notification-config.xml file.

    Check out and edit the same file in the procedure described in Enabling e-mail notifications. If you plan to complete that procedure next, keep the notification-config.xml file open and checked out.

  12. Check in the configuration files... 

      LCConfigService.checkInNotificationConfig("<temp_dir>","<cell-name>")

  13. Stop and restart Lotus Connections.


Complete the steps described in Enabling e-mail notifications before users can send and receive e-mail notifications.


Configure notifications

 

Related tasks

Enable e-mail notifications

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