WebSphere Adapter for Email

Inbound processing

The adapter polls the mail server at a specified interval, retrieves new messages from specified mail server folders, converts each message to a business object, and then sends the business objects to the application server.

Required folders for inbound communication

The following folders need to be present for each poll location. If you set up the adapter to poll in multiple locations, you must have these folders in each location.

Required folders:
  • In progress folder - Located on your local drive, it holds e-mails that are marked in progress in the event table.
  • Poll folder - One or more folders on the mail server that the adapter polls for new e-mails.

Supported inbound protocols

Depending on your mail server, you might be able to pick which inbound e-mail protocol to use. Differences between the protocols and a description of how the adapter processes each protocol are noted in the following table and sections that follow.

Table 1. Differences between the IMAP and POP3 protocols
IMAP POP3
Supports the existence of multiple mail folders on a mailbox. Supports only one mailbox (named "Inbox") per user.
Allows a copy of the e-mail to remain on the mail server after the client receives the e-mail. Supports a "View-once-only" feature on the server. The mail is deleted from the mail server once the client receives a copy of the mail.

Inbound with IMAP

If you use the IMAP protocol for your inbound communication, the adapter performs the following steps:
  1. The adapter polls the mail folders at regular intervals and logs any unread e-mails as events in the event table. You can use the activation specification PollFolders property to customize the list of folders that are searched.
  2. If you specify multiple mail server folders for the mail server account in the PollFolders property, the adapter polls all mail server folders sequentially.
  3. Search criteria determines which mail is picked up from the mail server. The adapter picks up all e-mail that match the criteria
  4. The adapter writes all polled e-mails to the InProgress folder in RFC822 format using the Message-ID of the polled e-mail as the file name. Once an e-mail is written into the InProgress folder, it is deleted from the mail server.
  5. The adapter transforms each e-mail message into a business object instance and delivers it to the enterprise application.
  6. The adapter deletes processed e-mails from the InProgress folder and archives them if archiving is selected.

Inbound with POP3

If you use the POP3 protocol for your inbound communication, the adapter performs the following steps:
  1. The adapter polls the Inbox mail folder at regular intervals and logs any unread e-mails as events in the event table.
  2. If you specify search criteria, all unread e-mails that fit the search criteria are picked up for polling.
    Note: When no search criteria is specified, all unread mail is picked up by default.
  3. The adapter writes all polled e-mails to the InProgress folder in RFC822 format and uses the Message-ID of the polled e-mail as the file name.
  4. Once an e-mail is read by the adapter it is deleted.
  5. The adapter transforms each e-mail message into a business object instance and delivers it to the enterprise application.
  6. The adapter deletes all processed e-mail from the InProgress folder and archives them if archiving is selected.

Archiving

You can configure the adapter to archive both successful and failed e-mails. To do this, the following folders must be present:
  • Archive folder – A file system folder where the adapter archives successful events.
  • Failed event folder – A file system folder where the adapter archives failed events.

When the ArchiveFolder property is specified, all successfully processed mail will be moved into the archive folder from the in progress folder. If you leave this property blank all successfully processed mail is deleted from the InProgress folder.

If the FailedEventsFolder is specified, all unsuccessfully processed mail will be moved into the failed events folder from the in progress folder. If you leave this property blank, all failed mail is deleted from the in progress folder.


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Last updated: Mon 30 Oct 2006 03:44:37

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