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 you begin
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
- Access the notification configuration file.
- Open the notification-config.xml file
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:<!--smtpJNDILookup>
...
</smtpJNDILookup-->
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.
- <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.
Within the
<javamail> section
of
notification-config.xml, add the following
property:
<property name="mail.smtp.sendpartial">true</property> This
ensures that a message with some valid and some invalid email addresses
will be sent, so that the valid email addresses will still receive
the message. If set to
false or not defined,
an invalid email address will cause the message not to be sent to
any email addresses.
- 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, close, and then check in the notification-config.xml file
as described in Accessing the notification configuration file.
- Stop and restart IBM Connections.
What to do next
You must complete the steps described in Enabling email
notifications before users can send and receive email notifications.