Re: IBM i SMTP email service -- MIDRANGE-L

Mike,

Creating html emails like outlook isn't too hard. With something like
CGIDEV2 or eRPG SDK you can build the HTML file in the IFS. And with an
email tool that can use a stream file as the body (MAILTOOL does, not sure
about others) it's fairly simple. One thing I would advise is when using
images or large attachments to so many recipients is to link to them.
Don't try to embed them. Just an opinion.

Also, sending to 5000 recipients sounds like something that could be done
more effectively with something other than email.

Have you thought about something like Slack? Everyone could sign up for a
group and when you someone posts everyone sees it (even will beep your
phone, similar to SMS). You can set up different groups in slack that
people can join if it's a category they want to know about. If you need to
post from a program on the IBM i to Slack, I have a solution for that too.
But it sounds mainly a manual thing. Web and device interfaces for slack
are pretty good.

Just some ideas. Sometimes email isn't always the best medium anymore, but
I know it's hard to get everyone to change.

Bradley V. Stone
www.bvstools.com
MAILTOOL Benefit #12 <https://www.bvstools.com/mailtool.html>: Both Text
and HTML email support

On Tue, Jan 23, 2018 at 10:11 AM, Mike Cunningham <mike.cunningham@xxxxxxx>
wrote:

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------------------------------

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