How To Setup Sending Email In Collect!

This topic discusses setting up the Email feature in Collect!

In order to send mail through Collect!, your system's Internet settings must be properly set up. By default, Collect! uses your MAPI interface for email. If you have Outlook set up and you are sending and receiving email successfully, Collect! should have no problem determining the information it needs to successfully transmit email requests from within the Collect! program.

Any Email client that works successfully with Windows (c) operating systems should work successfully to send email from within Collect!. The only requirement is that you enter a valid Email Address for the Operator whom you wish to enable to send email.

Enter Email Address

Select System from the top menu bar and then select Rights from the drop-down choices. This will display a sub-menu of additional choices. Select Operators to display the list of all Operators in your system. Select the Operator whom you would like to set up to send email.When the Operator form is displayed, enter a valid Email Address in the Operator form, in the field labeled Email.

If your system's Internet Settings are not set up, please consult your own technical support staff to complete this. Collect! Technical Services cannot support setting up of Internet connections, although we will try to advise you whenever possible.

Sending Email Using SMTP

Collect! is also able to use SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol). This is another standard mail transfer protocol.

SMTP is used to by Collect! when you want to send email directly to a mail server, bypassing a local email client. Some email clients don't support the HTML format and they require that you click a prompt for each email that goes out. Sending directly to a mail server adds simplicity to the configuration.

If you have your own mail server, you may want to set up sending email using SMTP. However, this is not necessary in many cases, so please do not use this without consulting with your technical staff.

You can leave this off if your email client supports HTML email from third party applications.

SMTP setup requires these additional steps:

1. Enable the operator to use SMTP
2. Enter the IP address of the mail server on the Database Preferences form.

There is a Server IP field on the Operator record, but it is typically not used as each Operator is not likely to have their own mail server.

These steps are explained next. When these tasks are done, as detailed below, SMTP will accept the requests sent to it.

Email Type

Select System from the top menu bar and then select Rights from the drop-down choices. This will display a sub-menu of additional choices. Select Operators to display the list of all Operators in your system. Select the Operator whom you would like to set up to send email using SMTP. When the Operator form is displayed, ensure that there is a valid Email Address in the Operator form, in the field labeled Email.

While still on the Operator form, select the Email tab and put a check mark in the box labeled Enable SMTP. This must be done for each Operator who is to send email within Collect! using SMTP.

You can leave this off if your email client supports HTML email from third party applications.

Email Server Address

While still on the Operator Email form, if the Operator had a dedicated email server, enter the IP address of the Operator's Mail Server in the field labeled Email Server IP;

If you have only one global Mail Server, select System from the top menu bar and then select, Network and Environment, Network Settings. Enter the IP address of your Mail Server in the field labeled Email Server Address. Every Operator you set up to use SMTP will use this Email Server, unless you have specified a particular Email Server IP in the Operator Email form.

Email Signature

While on the Operator Email form, you can enter an email signature for this operator in the field labeled Email Signature. This is optional.

This field only applies to the ad-hoc emails sent via the Email icon in the email field that opens the Send Mail form.

When populated with a file with a TXT extension, the text file is loaded into the Email Body. You can then update the email body with your own text and send the email.

When populated with a file with an HTML extension (not HTM), the email body remains blank. You can put in your email text, then send the email. When the email is sent, the HTML file is wrapped around the text that you just typed in. The body is inside a <pre> tag, so by default, the text is plain text. You can use CSS inside the HTML file to format the PRE tag with any formatting that you want.

SMTP Password Authentication

Enabling SMTP requires that your SMTP server allows unauthenticated requests. Collect! does not support passing user IDs and Passwords to the mail server. Since many SMTP servers require user name and password authentication, there may be issues regarding setting up your email accounts, depending on the email program you are using.

Please refer to the help topic How to Setup a Local Email Server Using hMailServer for instructions on creating an SMTP server.

Troubleshooting Email Security

When using an email client, you receive security warnings when you attempt to send a email from Collect!. These warning can be disabled in some programs, but not all of them.