Web Interface not saying Hello to Mail Server

Good Day,

I am in the process of evaluating CommitCRM 5.2.0.3 and have come across an issue with sending Web Interface Notifications when a customer creates or updates a ticket. I have edited the CommitWebIntNotifications.ini and CommitWebIntNotificationsEmails.txt as documented but the alerting is not working and I am getting the error below in the UserLog_CommitWebInterface.TXT file.

The email is being sent to Exchange Server 2007 which requires a "helo" at the start of an email and it appears the CommitCRM Web Interface is starting with "mail from".

Thanks,

Howard

[10/16/2009-1:23:44-(588) v3.1.5200.0]
Sender_Class=TMailSender
Cur_Thread_ID=1772, $6EC
Main_Thread_ID=896, $380
Proc_Name=SmtpClientRequestDone.GenErr
503 9

> MAIL FROM:<Commit@iss.bm>
< 503 5.5.2 Send hello first

Hi Howard,

Thanks for your question. I would first like to point out that the internal Web Interface notifications mechanism is a somewhat limited option, and when possible, we recommend on using the Alerts Server in order to receive alerts on new tickets (and other events). You an find more information on the Alerts Server module here.

That said, the notifications email you are trying should work for you. It's a little hard for us to identify the cause of the problem from the initial description only. I'll try to suggest some idea which usually helps.

General Info:
* Notifications are sent only when customers add/update Tickets while logged into the system using a Customer Web User
* After performing any modification to the Email Notifications files, you should Restart the RangerMSPWebInterface service

Tech Info:
You should configure Exchange SMTP and create a username/password for it (and not just the standard Exchange user).

While working on the same server where RangerMSPWebInterface is installed try sending email using a standard email client (like Outlook Express) – use the same IP/Port, username and password as you've set in the settings files and make sure email are sent (this test is completely external to RangerMSP).

After verifying emails can be sent using these settings on your server follow the items below:

Make sure that file RangerMSPWebIntNotificationsEmails.txt includes valid email address/es (and please test sending them during your test with the email client as mentioned above).

Set your SMTP server address in the "Host"
Set AuthRequired=Y
Specify the Username/Password for the relevant tokens

Set LoginKind=2

Restart to Web Interface service and try to add a new ticket using a customer web user client.

In case it doesn't work, try the same settings with login kind 0, then 1 and then 3.
If this does not work, I also recommend you set LoginKind = 5 (although this is not a recommended setting)
Make sure you restart the web interface service between each test.

I hope this will help you make it work.

Please let us know how it goes.

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

I suspected that you would suggest the Alerts Server is the preferable way to go which is an acceptable answer as if I go with CommitCRM that option will be on my shopping list.

I am able to send emails to the Exchange Server from the Vista virtual machine I am using to evaluateCommitCRM. I have done it using Windows Mail and manually using telnet to the smtp port.

I didn't experiment with authentication as it is not required for sending emails to mailboxes on the Exchange Server. It just appeared to me from the log that it was simply a matter of the Web Interface not sending a helo or ehlo at the beginning of an email.

Out of curiosity, I just tested it by sending the emails to my ISP’s mail server, which doesn’t require a helo, and it worked fine.

I won’t spend any more time on this and just look at the Alerts Server.

Thanks,

Howard

Thanks for the update.

For what it's worth, I believe that since the email which is sent via the Web Interface service, this uses different permissions and works a bit differently than your email client. I do believe that forcing authentication should help in this case. Note that if you plan on working with the Alerts Server, you may require the authentication there as well.

Hope this helps.

Neta

Thanks for the warning. :-)

Hi Neta,

I just tried the Alerts Server and it works fine without SMTP authentication when a new ticket is created in the Customer Web Interface so it must be sending a helo.

Below is from the test log in CommitCRM Server Settings and you can see it is also sending a helo.

Thanks,

Howard

Connecting to SMTP server...
< 220 DENOBULA.iss.bm Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service ready at Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:21:33 -0300
RequestDone Rq=0 Error=0
> HELO Vista64Test
< 250 DENOBULA.iss.bm Hello [172.20.50.119]
RequestDone Rq=1 Error=0
> MAIL FROM:<commit@iss.bm>
< 250 2.1.0 Sender OK
RequestDone Rq=2 Error=0

Thanks for the update, I'm glad the alerts worked this way for you. I suppose that it is thanks to the fact that it uses a more robust protocol to access the mail server.

Thanks for letting us know,
Neta