E-Mail Alert System Setup Guide

E-Mail Alert System Setup Guide

Overview

This document will guide you through the process for setting up the Data Integration Module (DIM) or Enterprise Dispatch Module (EDM) to use the built-in E-Mail Alert System. The E-Mail Alert System is a basic alert system which sends e-mails whenever any type of error occurs when processing Dispatches / Work Orders.
 

E-Mail Alert System Requirements

Setting up the E-Mail Alert System requires that the DIM or EDM have access to a SMTP mail server to send the e-mail alerts. This could be a SMTP server on the local machine or out on the Internet.
Before proceeding, the following details should be known in regards to the SMTP server:
  1. From E-Mail Address that will send the alerts
  2. To E-Mail Address that will receive the alerts
  3. SMTP Server Address
  4. Port the SMTP Server uses
  5. Whether or not the SMTP Server uses SSL
  6. From E-Mail Account’s Username and Password (if required by the SMTP server to send e-mails)
Most of this information can be found in the Account settings of an e-mail client application (like Outlook). If you are unsure about the correct SMTP settings, we recommend contacting your Company’s E-Mail Administrator for assistance.
Note: You need to have Admin access to read/write to the DIM or EDM Program Files folder. You may need to open Notepad (or your preferred text editor) as an Admin and browse to the file that you need to edit.
 

Setting Up the E-Mail Alert System

1. Stop the Integration Suite Service by:
      Opening up the appropriate Admin Utility and stopping the Service
            OR
      Opening up Windows Services and stop the Service directly
2. Download the config.xml file attached to this guide and open it using your preferred text editor. 
3. Set up your configurations as needed. See the section on Setting Up Your Configurations for more details.
4. Save your config.xml file to the component’s Program Files folder which by default would be:
      DIM
      32 Bit: C:\Program Files\F2B Data Integration Module
      64 Bit: C:\Program Files (x86)\F2B Data Integration Module
      EDM
      32 Bit: C:\Program Files\F2B Enterprise Dispatch Module
      64 Bit: C:\Program Files (x86)\F2B Enterprise Dispatch Module
5. Start the Service.
 

Setting Up Your Configurations

Name
Default
Example
AlertEmailFromAddress

(required)
None
<add key="AlertEmailFromAddress" value="sender@youraddress.com" />

<add key="AlertEmailToAddress" value="recipient@youraddress.com" />
AlertEmailToAddress

(required)
None
<add key="AlertEmailServer" value="mail.yourserver.com" />
AlertEmailServer

(If the SMTP Server is not on the local host machine) 
localhost
<add key="AlertEmailServer" value="mail.yourserver.com" />
AlertEmailPort

(If the SMTP Server Port needs to be changed)
25
<add key="AlertEmailPort" value="867" />
AlertEmailUseSsl

(If the SMTP Server uses SSL, replace the "false" with "true")
FALSE
<add key="AlertEmailUseSsl" value="true" />
AlertEmailUsername

(If the SMTP Server requires a login, add your username and password)
None
<add key="AlertEmailUsername" value="sender@yourserver.com" /> 
AlertEmailPassword

(If the SMTP Server requires a login, add your username and password)
None
<add key="AlertEmailPassword" value="yourpassword" />
 

Testing Your E-Mail Alerts

The E-Mail Alert System is a basic alert system which sends e-mails whenever any type of error occurs when processing Dispatches in each component. This does mean that testing for this is rudimentary. If you have the ability to easily generate a failure (i.e. re-process a known issue), then confirming the alerts system is relatively easy to do. Otherwise, you will have to check the logs periodically to see if any errors occur, and look for whether an email alert was sent or if there was an issue with the email alert.

Log Examples 

Here is a log snippet of the system being setup correctly:
  1. 03/25 04:30:17.03 PM (tid: 5) Info       : Sent e-mail alert to joe@field2base.com

Here is a log snippet of the system NOT being setup correctly: 
  1. 03/25 04:21:49.11 PM (tid: 5) Error      : Could not send mail alert. Caught SmtpException: Failure sending mail.

E-Mail Examples

E-Mail Alert for DIM
From: f2bsupport@field2base.com 
Subject: F2BDataIntegrationService: Errors processing data

2013-03-25 16:29:01 Info  Processing dispatch 1, Ref# 8675309
2013-03-25 16:29:01 Info  Saving eForm PDF to C:\Test\DIM\Form Name - 1 - 2013_03_25.pdf
2013-03-25 16:29:01 Error Could not write PDF. Caught DirectoryNotFoundException: Could not find a part of the path ‘C:\Test\DIM\Form Name - 1 - 2013_03_25.pdf’.
2013-03-25 16:29:01 Info  Doing rollback processing
2013-03-25 16:29:01 Info  The dispatch has been tried 1 time(s). It will be tried again.
2013-03-25 16:29:01 Error There were errors processing dispatch 1, ref# 8675309 in project Test - PDF
 
F2BDataIntegrationService
PC-NAME
 
E-Mail Alert for EDM 
From: f2bsupport@field2base.com
Subject: F2BDispatcherService: Dispatch processing errors

2013-04-16 20:05:53 Caught OleDbException: Invalid object name 'dbo.DatabaseName'.
2013-04-16 20:05:53 There were errors processing project Form Name
 
F2BDispatcherService
PC-NAME
 

Additional Notes

  1. In version 1.2, the EDM will only send alerts for errors occurring in SQL based Projects. CSV based Projects will not send any alerts at this time. It was be remedied in the version 1.3.
  2. This Alert system was designed to send notifications to an Administrator when there are processing errors. It does not send alerts if the service is stopped manually or due to error. There are a number of methods to check service status within Windows. If you would like to learn about some methods that Field2Base employs, please contact Technical Support.
  3. The e-mails sent from the Alert system are not intended to be guaranteed delivery. If the SMTP server specified is unavailable and the alerts cannot be sent immediately, then they are not retried. If you are interested in a more robust delivery system, you could install and run a SMTP server on the local machine where the F2B component is installed.
  4.  The Alert system currently only allows one To e-mail address to be assigned. If you want to send these notifications to a group of people, you will need to setup a group or distribution list account in your e-mail system to distribute the alert.


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