17 replies to this topic

[johnay]

Is there a way to have MOM send emails without friggin' Outlook?

I mean how hard is it to write a function to send a message via SMTP, anyway?

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

[interwoven]

Is there a way to have MOM send emails without friggin' Outlook?

I mean how hard is it to write a function to send a message via SMTP, anyway?

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2821.txt

johnay,

I am assuming you are talking about the security warning box being the problem. If that is the case then the solution below has worked great for us.

We got around the outlook issue by, believe it or not, using Outlook express as a default mail handler. We still use Outlook for our main email tasks but all email sent automatically by the sytem goes thru Outlook Express and we have not had any issues for over a year. There is an option in Outlook Express to disable the security warning, unlike in Outlook, so mail flies right out. The emails do not appear formatted correctly when you view them in the sent mail folder but they are when opened by the recipient.

We simply setup an Email account in Outlook Express but set it to not delete messages from the server once downloaded. Mark Outlook Express as your default mail handler. We then setup the Same Email account in Outlook but mark it to delete messages from the server once downloaded and leave that open thru out the day. When Mom sends a notice it goes out thru Outlook Express without Outlook Express needing to be open and any replies to those emails come in thru Outlook. If you open Outlook Express to view sent messages and such and a message does happen to come in while you have it open, since you marked the account to not delete messages off the server once downloaded it will download into Outlook also and you can handle it from there!

It's worked great for us, no complaints at all from customers so I know the email is getting out to them. Best of luck

Brian
Hanks Clothing

[johnay]

No, we just plain don't have or want Outlook.

The business about setting the default email program is a pain. We use Forte Agent, and like having it pop up when we click mailto: links. I'd hate to have OE pop up instead.

[interwoven]

No, we just plain don't have or want Outlook.

The business about setting the default email program is a pain. We use Forte Agent, and like having it pop up when we click mailto: links. I'd hate to have OE pop up instead.

Can't blame you for that. That was one thing I also liked about OE. The program doesn't open when you click the customers email link. Just the compose new mail box opens and then you send it from there. Outlook Express doesn't open.

I'm sure what you want could be done. It's way out of my expertise though. Good luck and will be interested in hearing if you find a solution.

[4inkjets]

johnay,

How did you disable the warning in outlook express?

Aaron

[johnay]

We haven't gotten that far yet. Maybe interwoven might know.

[interwoven]

Go to Tools>Options> then the Security Tab.

Uncheck "Warn me when other applications try to send mail as me"

Just a disclaimer here real quick.
This does open up a security hole if you do not keep your computer updated or an employee browses to somewhere they shouldn't so this is at your own risk. It might be wise to keep it checked and then when it is time to send a batch of emails just go in and uncheck it, and when they are done re-check it. Only takes a second and might be the wise thing to do.

Also a no-brainer but NEVER EVER open any attachments that you are not 100% sure about.

Hope this helps.

Brian

johnay,

How did you disable the warning in outlook express?

Aaron

[CDI Fulfillment]

I ran across a little program called ClickYes. It takes care of that stupid little prompt from Outlook. You can go to www.contextmagic.com to download their free version. You could also pay for their ClickYes Pro, which I believe, gives additional functionality as far as determining which programs are allowed to send email through Outlook without receiving the security prompt.

[johnay]

I was thinking about this tonight. It occured to me that some sort of print-to-email driver might do the trick, if it could read the recipients email address & subject text from, say, the first two lines of the "printed" text. This is also assuming MOM will let you specify which printer to send notices you want emailed, though the way it seems to ask about every different report & notification I believe that's a fairly safe assumption.

I Googled on '"print to email" driver windows' but haven't found quite the thing yet. Most print-to-email drivers available seem to want to convert the printed document to PDF or a graphic image, and ask you who to send it to like the print-to-fax drivers do. What I had in mind was a text-only driver that would generate plain text email and figure out the recipient as described above.

Anyone come across such a driver, or maybe some specs on how to write a text-only driver?

Thanks!

[johnay]

Trying OE for now, but the messages aren't being sent. They just sit in MOM's contact queue. :(

Any hints?

[johnay]

DUH DUH DUH!

I had turned off printing of notices at that phase in the batch processing. The option should read "print/email/fax" or something else non-specific to printing.

[johnay]

More on print-to-email...

MS has its Windows Driver Foundation CD downloadable as an ISO, which should work, I assume, with VC++ 2005 Express which is also free to download until some time this fall.

Both are a bit beyond this old VB programmer, for the moment, but I was also referred to http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/ . It hosts a program that will set up a special port which forwards data sent to it to any program you want that will accept data from the standard input (CON, IIRC.) That should be a sufficient interface between a generic text-only printer driver and a program to interpret the standard input as an email message to be sent. I think I'll call it CON2MAIL. (Google finds nothing by that name. :) )

I suppose for added security I'll make the from address configurable as a CON2MAIL option, or maybe have it also require a password header which would of course be left out of the email when sent.

If it works well enough I may post it as a download, if an appropriate category can be created.

[MikeN]

I don't know if this would be of any help or not, but there is this great public domain (and possibly open source) command line SMTP mailer called BLAT (http://www.blat.net/). With it, you can print to a text file then email the text file. I call it with batch file from scheduled tasks... it emails me log files every night. I have been using it for several years and it has never failed me. There's also a DLL version, so you could call it from your vbscript...

MikeN

More on print-to-email...

MS has its Windows Driver Foundation CD downloadable as an ISO, which should work, I assume, with VC++ 2005 Express which is also free to download until some time this fall.

Both are a bit beyond this old VB programmer, for the moment, but I was also referred to http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/redmon/ . It hosts a program that will set up a special port which forwards data sent to it to any program you want that will accept data from the standard input (CON, IIRC.) That should be a sufficient interface between a generic text-only printer driver and a program to interpret the standard input as an email message to be sent. I think I'll call it CON2MAIL. (Google finds nothing by that name. )

I suppose for added security I'll make the from address configurable as a CON2MAIL option, or maybe have it also require a password header which would of course be left out of the email when sent.

If it works well enough I may post it as a download, if an appropriate category can be created.

[johnay]

That would probably speed development up a bit. Thanks!

I'm kinda looking forward to the learning experience of writing my own SMTP interface code, though. I'm sure it would be challenging, but would probably make for a cleaner running program overall. I have done POP3 before, so It's not like I'm starting completely cold with following RFCs. Maybe I'll start off with BLAT and integrate SMTP later.

In either case, it's a back burner project at the moment. We're functional with OE on the one PC that sends the notices. Cleaning that up that little bit of the back end will come later, after other projects that will help streamline the workflow or even increase sales.

[SpaceShot]

Being a longtime developer on Windows and having had a similar problem, let me offer the following.

1) The problem was "solved" the same way by unchecking the "Warn me when other applications..." checkbox. Worked for a small business with one workstation.

2) If you ever decided to tackle the SMTP issue, I would advise finding a way to get MOM to spit out the email as a text file, or some kind of file. Then I believe it would be ultra easy to use VB or VBScript to send the email (using CDONTS or whatever the modern interfaces are, say if you used VB.net or C#). Personally, I would find this _way_ easier than trying to implement the SMTP spec, or even using C++ to send email. C++ just doesn't play as easily with scriptable objects as the other languages do.

And I say that as a C++ developer. I just don't get into religious debates over it. I can't deny that i can write the few lines of code to create a Mail CDONTS object over importing the COM object into a C++ app.

I'm NOT a MOM expert. Although I'm here because I am helping out this small business and need to become one.

Just a thought.

[interwoven]

Well I just tested something and was seeing if some other people could test this out also.

I use Thunderbird for email at home and thought I would do a test. I downloaded it on a box at work here and set up an email account in it and set it as my default email client. I then went into MOM under Global Preferences>Notices and unchecked using Outlook 2000 or later under Email/Fax Settings.

I then went to an order and sent some HTML notices and Thunderbird popped up a message asking if you wanted it to warn you whenever an application tried to send mail. I unchecked that and the mail sent.

The mail came thru formatted perfectly, unlike Outlook express which we had used in the past. We had switched back to Outlook with Express Click yes but that program frequently requires a re-boot of the PC it is installed on as it seemd to quit working often.

At any rate maybe some other MOM users could test this and see if it might be a possible solution for some to avoid the warning box from Outlook.

This is an annoying thorn in the side for us on a daily basis and perhaps installing Thunderbird on a machine to send notices from would be a possible solution for some.

Thanks

Brian
Hanks Clothing

[johnay]

Well that's pretty cool, Brian.

I'll have to try it out with SeaMonkey. We use Agent for our email, which seems to work well enough with mailto: links in web pages but requires interaction to send each message. I don't think I would terribly mind having SeaMonkey's email client handle that, though.