Sending mail from any available mail server

Sending mail from any available mail server

Configure IBM® 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 email notifications fail to be delivered. If one or more SMTP servers are returned by the lookup, then IBM Connections attempts to send the email through one, and then the next until the email is sent successfully.

Before starting

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 IBM 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.

Procedure
Start the wsadmin client from the following directory of the system on which you installed the deployment manager:

app_server_root>\profiles\<dm_profile_root>\bin

Note: You must start the client from this directory or subsequent commands that you try to run will not execute properly. See Starting the wsadmin client for more details.
Access the IBM Connections configuration files:
execfile("connectionsConfig.py")
If prompted to specify a service to connect to, type 1 to pick the first node in the list. Most commands can run on any node. If the command writes or reads information to or from a file using a local file path, pick the node where the file is stored. This information is not used by the wsadmin client when you are making configuration changes.
Check out the notification-config.xml file using the following command:
LCConfigService.checkOutNotificationConfig("<temp_dir>","<cell_name>")
where <temp_dir> is a temporary directory and <cell_name> is the WebSphere® Application Server cell to which you installed the application for which you are enabling mail. When you specify a path to the temporary directory on a system running Microsoft Windows, use a forward slash for the directory. For example: "C:/temp".

Note: AIX and Linux only: The temporary directory must grant write permissions or the command will not run successfully.
From the temporary directory to which you checked out the notification-config.xml file, open it in a text editor.
Search for the <emailChannelConfig> element, and then change the value of the <useJavaMailProvider> element from true to false:
<useJavaMailProvider>false</useJavaMailProvider>
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:


to the following markup:
<smtpJNDILookup>
... </smtpJNDILookup>
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 IBM 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
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. See the

IBM WAS information center for information on J2C aliases. <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 to complete 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.
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>
Save and close the notification-config.xml file.

Note: Check out and edit the same file in the procedure described in Enabling email notifications. If you plan to complete that procedure next, keep the notification-config.xml file open and checked out.
Check in the configuration files using the following command:
LCConfigService.checkInNotificationConfig("<temp_dir>","<cell-name>")
Stop and restart IBM Connections.
What to do next

You must complete the steps described in Enable email notifications before users can send and receive email notifications.

Parent topic
Configure notifications

Related tasks
Starting the wsadmin client
Enable email notifications

+
Search Tips | Advanced Search