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 Express 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 submenu 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 in HTML format. It is also recommended if you are sending batches of email.

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.

SMTP setup requires these additional steps:

1. Enable the operator to use SMTP

2. Enter the IP address of each Operator's Mail Server (or the IP Address of the global Mail Server, if applicable)

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

Enable SMTP

Select System from the top menu bar and then select Rights from the drop-down choices. This will display a submenu 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.

Email Server Address

While still on the Operator Email form, enter the IP address of the Operator's Mail Server in the field labeled Email Server IP.

If you have a global Mail Server, then enter the Mail Server IP in Database Preferences.

Setting Global Mail Server

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.

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.

Troubleshooting Email Security

When using MS Outlook Express (c) as your email client, you may need to disarm a security warning that pops up when you attempt to send a email from Collect! The warning is similar to the screen shot below.

To disable this security warning, please select the Tools menu in your Email Client and choose Options from the list of choices. This will display a screen with many categories of options which can be set.

Select the tab labeled Security and remove the check mark from the box labeled Warn me when other applications try to send email as me. Then select the button labeled Apply, so that the new setting can take effect, and then select the button labeled OK.

IF you are using a different Email Client, you may need to refer to its documentation to find out how to set the options.