Management of email functionalities

This section describes emailing in a single-server environment. Please contact the ConSol CM support or your ConSol CM consultant for information about emailing in a cluster.

Starting from ConSol CM version 6.11, only NIMH is available for mailing. If you are not sure in which mode CM is running, check the CM system property cmas-nimh, nimh.enabled. If it is set to true, your system is running in NIMH mode, if it is set to false, your system is running in Mule/ESB mode. For information regarding Mule/ESB, please refer to a previous version of this manual.

Short overview of components relevant for mailing

In order to run smoothly, the following modules of ConSol CM have to be taken into consideration on a server:

• email has to be fetched
• email has to be sent

The email configuration is explained in detail in the ConSol CM Administrator Manual, section Email.

The CM system properties which are relevant are summarized in the appendix Important System Properties - Ordered by Area of Application, Email Configuration.

Fetching emails

• Service:
  The NIMH service is active (see Admin Tool, navigation group Services, navigation item CM Services).
• Scripts:
  The mailing scripts with the NIMH extension are active (e.g., NIMHCreateTicket.groovy), see Admin Tool, navigation group System, navigation item Scripts.
• Data:
  Emails which cannot be processed are stored in the database table cmas_nimh_archived_mail.

Sending emails

When the CM server is started, the module which can send emails using the SMTP server is started as well. Sending out emails is always active when the following two conditions are met:

• CM is up and running.
• A correct value has been set for the SMTP server (CM system property cmas-core-server, mail.smtp.email).

Fine-tuning CM mailing

Changing administrator email addresses

This is explained in detail in the ConSol CM Administrator Manual, Appendix E - Administrator and Notification Email Addresses.

Changing mailing parameters

Location of the mailing parameters

The basic mailing parameters are changed using the Admin Tool, navigation group Email, navigation item Email. In case you would like to set some specific values which cannot be reached using the standard graphical Admin Tool interface, you can work with CM system properties (see Admin Tool, navigation group System, navigation item System Properties. The CM system properties which are relevant are summarized in appendix Important System Properties - Ordered by Area of Application, Email Configuration. Some properties which are used quite often are mentioned here as examples.

Example 1: Changing the maximum size of email attachments

System property cmas-core-server, attachment.max.size. This sets the maximum attachment size, in MB.

This is a validation property of the ConSol CM API. It controls the size of attachments at tickets, units, and resources. It also controls the size of incoming (not outgoing!) email attachments.

Example 2: Narrowing down the file types which are allowed as attachments

System property cmas-core-server, attachment.allowed.types. This is a comma-separated list of allowed file name extensions. If no value is defined, all file extensions are allowed.

Example 3: Deciding whether emails should be deleted from the mail server

As far as the mail server is concerned, ConSol CM is just a regular email client fetching emails using a standard mail protocol: IMAP(S) or POP3(S). Depending on the mail server configuration and on the ConSol CM system property cmas-nimh, mailbox.default.task.delete.read.messages, emails are deleted from the mailbox on the mail server after CM has picked them up. The default setting is that emails are not deleted after fetching them (value false). To delete emails on the mail server after ConSol CM has fetched them, set the property to true.

If you do not want ConSol CM to delete emails from the mail server, please make sure to monitor the mailboxes to avoid a data overflow and server or performance problems.

Monitoring email functionalities

See section Monitoring email functionalities.