Email Agents

The E-mail Agent in AlarmWorX Multimedia allows you to receive and acknowledge alarms using an e-mail message. The E-mail Agent supports the following e-mail types:

Simple MAPI (for use with Microsoft Outlook Express, Lotus Notes, Simple MAPI Mail).
Extended MAPI (for use with Microsoft Outlook). The Microsoft Outlook (MMXMailExt.exe) and Outlook Express (MMXMail.exe) are both essentially the same agent except that in Outlook Express, in options, you can suppress warning messages when a third-party software client is trying to send out email. However, in Outlook no such option exists. By using this Outlook agent, the warning message is automatically suppressed, relieving you from sitting in front of the machine and acknowledging the warning message to send out the email.
SMTP (for use with SMTP serveroutgoingmail only). By default, this agent is enabled during installation. It is much simpler to set up SMTP compared to setting up Outlook or Outlook Express to work with AlarmWorX64 Multimedia. However, the down side to SMTP is that it does not allow you to acknowledge alarms. You can only send out messages that notify you of alarms. But if you need to be able to acknowledge the alarm via email, you must use on of the other email agents. For additional information, refer to the Using SMTP Server in IIS topic.

Once you have decided which email agent to use, you will need to enable to correct one on your system during installation. If you have already installed AlarmWorX Multimedia and either installed it with a different active agent or you do not remember which agent you have chosen at the time of installation, you can manually activate the agent you would like to use now. Refer to Manually Activating the Email Agent You Want to Use for instructions.

There are two steps involved when trying to manually activate an agent. We will first have to enable the Registration Context Menu and then register the correct agent.

Prerequisites and Installation

To operate the E-mail Agent, a MAPI-compliant third-party e-mail program must be on the computer from which e-mails are sent. Microsoft® Outlook is an example of a MAPI-compliant third party e-mail program. Microsoft Outlook Express can also be used and can be downloaded for free from Microsoft. However, unlike Outlook, Outlook Express will only work with POP3 e-mail servers. Outlook Express version 6 requires additional security settings in order for the E-mail Agent to work properly. For more information, go to: http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q29049

The E-mail Agent will only operate on e-mail messages in the e-mail programs default folder. For example, a reply with an acknowledge code will only be seen if sent to the default e-mail programs folder (Inbox for Microsoft Outlook). If you set up your e-mail program to reroute your mail to other various folders, the multimedia agent might not read the incoming e-mail.

Note: For high volume applications it is often better to use the email agent for pager support. This is due to the fact that a majority of pager services support email to page. Set the SentTo field to "Pager number@Pager service", i.e.5551230@service.com. This causes the pager service's email system to process the email and send the information to the pager. This method avoids the delay associated with modem dial-up.

When you are using an email agent, you must have a default mail account setup on the computer. You must also set up this account to login automatically. This is usually accomplished by using the user name and password of the account that is used to log in to the Windows computer.

For Microsoft Outlook 2003 or 2007, the mail client must be open in order for emails to be sent out. This is due to a spooler issue in Microsoft Outlook 2003 and 2007 and may not be necessary for future versions of Outlook.
For Microsoft Outlook 2000, the sent mail items will only be displayed in the Out folder. They are not transferred into the Sent folder.

Security

Security is a major topic when it comes to communications. In general, it is a good idea to use security so that emails do not fall into the wrong hands. However, depending on the sensitivity of the content of your email, you may consider not using security; the advantage is a possible increase in performance since the mail system does not have to do the extra work associated with security.

Email Server Security

In general, the AlarmWorX Multimedia email agent relies on the security of your email server. When using either the Outlook or Outlook Express agents, they will use the default email client on your computer to send and receive emails. For example, if all emails are sent and received via the same Microsoft Exchange server, then each connection to the server will be secure if properly configured on the server side. The Exchange server provides secure connections; however, the emails sent over that connection are unencrypted.

The same thing is true for SMTP agents. The agent will first try to use Extended SMTP (ESMTP) first to provide secure email authorization. This is achieved by using the user name and password to log into the server you have entered in the Workbench. The email server should take care of security on the connection to it. As with the other agents, the emails sent are unencrypted.

For some systems, the ESMTP option is not available (or if the user name and password fields are empty), the system will still attempt to send out email using standard SMTP. In this case, some mail systems validate sending email addresses as a way of securing email. If that is the case, we have provided a From Email Address field in the General Settings.

Email Client Security

If you are using Outlook, you can choose to encrypt your outgoing mails. This encryption is done on the client-side by going to Tools > Trust Center and selecting the E-mail Security section to configure encryption on your email. Another example of a program that offers email encryption is PGP.

The SMTP agent does not provide email encryption. It encrypts only the user name and password that you have entered into the Workbench. You could, however, send encrypted attachments with the email using the SMTP agent. The risk of using unencrypted, unsecured email depends on the sensitivity of the information that you are sending in the emails. However, unencrypted emails can easily be “sniffed” and intercepted by malicious programs or persons.

Configuration fields

The following configuration fields are available for the E-mail Agent:

Media Item Name: Enter a name for the e-mail contact.
Node: Enter the node name for the computer from which you wish to send the e-mails. If left blank, the e-mails will be sent from the computer running the Multimedia Server. Click the Browse button to search for a node.
Description: Allows you to add comments to the agent configuration.
Media Template: You must choose a template to be used with the E-mail Agent. The template determines the actual message that gets sent to e-mail recipients. The Configurator includes a template, called Default E-mail, created for sending e-mail messages. For more information about templates, please see Media Templates.
TEST button: Sends an e-mail message to test your configuration.
Scheduling: If you are using scheduling, you can choose from the configured schedules on the drop-down list. See Schedules for more information.
Role: Select a role from the drop-down list. For information about roles, please see Working With Roles.
Enable Alarm Prioritization: When this check box is checked, the multimedia system processes alarms based on the severity level of the alarm. If the check box is not checked, alarms are processed only on a first-in-first-out basis.
Send To: Enter the e-mail address of the recipient to whom you wish to send the e-mail message.
CC: Sends a carbon copy of the e-mail to another recipient.
BCC: Sends a "blind" carbon copy of the e-mail message to another recipient.
Acknowledge Code: Enter the string you wish to use as the acknowledge code.
Send to Pager: Uses the E-mail Agent to send an optimized message to a pager. You can still use the E-mail Agent to send a message to a pager without checking this. However, checking this decreases the character count of the identifier variables, thus reducing the cost in pagers that charge according to number of characters. Using this option will limit you to 99,999 unique messages before resetting the numbering back to one.
Apply button: Saves all changes to the configuration database.
Reset button: Clears all recently added information.
Refresh button: Resets fields to the original data before changes, except if the Apply button has been clicked.