RE: IBM i SMTP email service

One thought might also be to use Constant Contact, Mail Chimp or one of the bulk mail providers instead of a listserv.

If you're doing enough of this stuff, it's probably worthwhile and you can also use them for newsletters and such.

Or if you did something from the IBMi, place the CSV file data in a database and mark with a flag and have a RPG, PHP, Python, whatever job move through the data and send out the emails individually.

And of course the commercial options like our Automate software could automate the entire process for you including composing an HTML email and sending natively with attachments via Office365.

Automate or custom PC code could even be used to automate the Outlook client if you will want to use outlook to send to groups of 250-500 in a single email. Then your users can send 10-15 individual emails with groups of addresses or 5000 individually addressed email messages with personalization.

There are options 😊


Regards,
Richard Schoen
Director of Document Management
e. richard.schoen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
p. 952.486.6802
w. helpsystems.com
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message: 5
date: Tue, 23 Jan 2018 16:11:30 +0000
from: Mike Cunningham <mike.cunningham@xxxxxxx>
subject: RE: IBM i SMTP email service

All good questions. Right now we are exploring options. We have some office that send out thousands of emails in adhoc requests. Last one was near 5,000. (We have about 5,500 students). Up until a month ago we had on site Exchange. In December we changed to Office 365 (many advantages for higher ed outside just email services). Discovered after that change that O365 limits the "TO" box to 500 emails. So in the past a user could cut/paste their entire 5,000 address list and send. Now they have to select 500 at a time and send multiple times. Process killer? No, not in my opinion, but there is sufficient push back from these offices to find ways to make it better. So one alternative was to use the IBM I SMTP server to send these mass emails by letting the user who needs to do this connect and send as many as needed. (p.s. not my favorite alternative but it is a possibility). Another avenue we are exploring is a listserv what lets someone import a list of emails before sending

and then sending to the list. Could be some room for error here if they load the list today with 1,000 and send their email, then next week load 2,000 without first purging the original list. Emails could go to the wrong group. My favorite option is we build a way for them to upload their list (csv), we clear and then populate a database table and link that table to the listsserv, or even just use the API calls to send the emails from the i. Right now I don't know the complexity of the content of the emails sent which might make that a limitation. HTML email with links and images and multiple attachments. I don't think we could replicate the capabilities of Outlook when composing an email.

-----Original Message-----
From: MIDRANGE-L [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Richard Schoen
Sent: Monday, January 22, 2018 11:06 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: RE: IBM i SMTP email service

I believe you can still use the IBMi SMTP and POP server, but from a business perspective I would ask why in today's world with the poor quality of the IBMi mail handling services ?

Why wouldn't you set up a mailbox somewhere else. ?

What's your primary mail server ?

What's the business use case where you would want to have a mailbox somewhere other than your primary email server ?

There are many FREE and paid tools that can retrieve email messages quickly from a mailbox and process them on IBMi.

One such paid tool is our Automate software.

Tell use more about the why it has to be IBMi ?

Regards,
Richard Schoen
Director of Document Management
e. richard.schoen@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
p. 952.486.6802
w. helpsystems.com

-----Original Message-----
Subject: IBM i SMTP email service
From: Mike Cunningham <mike.cunningham@xxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2018 02:38:29 +0000

We have used the SMTP server for years to send emails. First with SNDDST and now with API calls. Now we have a business need to see if we can use this email service to let a user connect via POP/IMAP using an email client like Outlook to send emails through the IBM i service. I can find lots of references to using Domino to do this but we don't run Domino. Is something like this possible?

Thanks
Mike Cunningham------------------------------