There is a lot of email integration in both WSSv3 and Office SharePoint Server 2007. Exchange Server is not required for any of this integration although Outlook provides some user functionality in addition to the browser for managing alert subscriptions.
Outgoing E-Mail
Email alerts for list or library item level activity.
This is configured in the "Central Administration > Operations > Outgoing E-Mail Settings" screen. You can have SharePoint send mail directly to your mail system or via the IIS SMTP service which can be configured to forward the mail. The latter option is useful for testing as you can turn off the forwarding and see the SharePoint generated messages in the file system.
Incoming E-Mail
If enabled, SharePoint sites can receive e-mail and store incoming messages in lists, discussions and libraries.
This email functionality is configured in the "Central Administration > Operations > Incoming E-Mail Settings" screen.
To enable this feature you must also have the Windows SMTP Service running on one of the servers in your farm. This will not work if Exchange Server is installed on the same server.
Directory Management Service
If enabled, this service can synchronize site groups with Active Directory E-Mail enables security groups
Getting Started
Although the IIS SMTP service is not required for outgoing email, it is required for incoming email so you may as well plan on installing it. It must be installed on at least one of the front end SharePoint servers (WSS or MOSS). This means that it can't be an Exchange server (May change for RTM).
After you add the IIS SMTP service, it will default to accepting email for the NetBios server name or, if defined in the network card properties, the DNS domain name of the server.
To get the SharePoint incoming email features to work within your organizations' email infrastructure, you don't need to configure the Directory Management Service feature within MOSS (it is not included with WSS anyway) but you may have to make some changes to the IIS SMTP service and your DNS server so that mail can be routed to the SharePoint server rather than your normal email server (Exchange, Notes, etc).
For wssdemo.com, I had to add the wssdemo.com domain as an alias because the server was part of another domain, so that the SMTP service would accept email for this domain. I also had to create a DNS mx record for this domain that points to the IP address of the SMTP/WSS server.
This causes email sent to @wssdemo.com to be placed in the drop folder on the SMTP server (as defined in the properties of the Local Default domain).
Before you try and get the SharePoint email integration working, you should test that email sent to this domain arrives in the drop directory (default location is C:\Inetpub\mailroot\Drop). You can do this from Outlook Express or you can use the SMTPDiag utility which you can download from here http://www.wssdemo.com/redir.aspx?ID=918
You should specify this directory location in the "Central Administration > Operations > Incoming E-Mail Settings" screen if you select the advanced options.
Email Enabled List/Library
The following Lists/Libraries can be email enabled:
- Discussion Lists
- Picture Libraries
- Document Libraries
You can email enable a SharePoint list or library from the list settings menu. There are a few different options depending on the list/library type.
To receive email from people not granted access to your site you must modify the email options of your discussion list to allow this. e.g.
Use list security for e-mail to ensure that only users who can write to the list can send e-mail to the list.
Caution: "Archive all e-mail regardless of sender" will allow users to anonymously author to your list. Choose this option only if you are aware of the security implications. |
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