Email Management

Email Management

Changing the time of day for Email notifications

Email notifications and mailing list digests are sent out once a day. The default time is 1:00 P.M. Even though sending email doesn’t have much impact on system performance, you’ll probably want to choose a time when you expect other activity on WebBoard to be relatively light. You may also want to consider what time of day people would benefit most for receiving these messages (such as first thing in the morning), or a logical time to break up conference content (for example, at 11:00 P.M., the end of each day).

To set the email hour:

On the Management Menu, click Site Management.
On the Site Management form, scroll down to the Email Settings section.
In the Email Hour field, click the arrowhead on the pull-down menu to select a different hour. This setting can be only on the hour.
Click Save Changes to update the time.

Note
You can bypass the email hour setting by running WBMail.exe (located in \WebBoard\ System) at any time. Doing so forces WebBoard to send email notifications, but not digests, at its earliest opportunity. WebBoard still sends digests and email notifications at the email hour specified.

Changing the name of the SMTP Server

Two SMTP servers are required to implement WebBoard’s full email capabilities. An external SMTP server, whose location is set in this field, handles all outbound messages. The internal SMTP server (WBSMTP.exe) handles inbound messages and resides in WebBoard’s System folder. The external SMTP server sends welcome messages, email notifications, and mailing list messages (non-digest and digests). You already indicated this mail server when you installed WebBoard, but you can confirm or change it on the Site Management form in the Email Settings section .

The external SMTP server can reside on the same computer as WebBoard or on a different computer. If the external server is on the same computer as WebBoard, the external server must have the ability to route incoming mail to another port on the same computer. As of this writing, only Post.Office is a confirmed compatible server; see the WebBoard knowledge base for additional compatible mail servers.

To have an external SMTP server exist on the same computer as WebBoard, you first bind the WebBoard internal SMTP server to a non-standard SMTP port. Then you configure your other SMTP server to route mail for WebBoard to that port. Each mail server has a slightly different procedure, but the key is to look for routing configuration, such as in routing properties or a routing table.

To specify an external SMTP server and test that it is working properly, follow these steps:

Enter the FQDN of the external SMTP server in the SMTP Server field.
Click Save Changes.
Subscribe to a conference that has mailing list support enabled from the Mailing List link on the More Options menu.
Verify that your email address is correct and that you have selected non-digest for your mailing list format in your User Profile (using Edit Your Profile on the More Options menu).
Post a message to the conference you subscribed to in Step 3. Remember that this message will go to all other users who have subscribed to this mailing list. You may want to indicate it is a test message.
Wait about 10 seconds and then check your email. You should find your message in your email inbox. If you manually check your mail, do so now.
Return to the conference where you posted your test message and delete the message, if necessary.