Enable Incoming Email of SharePoint

Overview and Topology

 

Configuring incoming email settings of SharePoint is not very difficult even though it involves serveral different components in the network: Exchange Server, Active Diretory Server, SMTP Server and SharePoint Server.

 

 

 

The most confusing part of these settings is "Directory Management Service". Basically the "Directory Management Service" is a web service that communicates with Active Directory to make the email addresses configured in SharePoint available to the end user's Outlook address book. However "Directory Management Service" only works with older version of Exchange Server: 2003 not the current Exchange Server 2007. If you enabled and configured this setting, the AD objects will be created in AD but no email address data will be associated with the AD objects and thus the end user still cannot see the email addresses in their Outlook .

 

Another annoying issue with enabling the "Directory Management Service" is this error if you try to enable, disable and enable the incoming email again for an document library.

"Unable to assign this e-mail address to the list, because the address is in use."

This is caused by the caching of email address in the "Directory Management Service". You will have to wait for about 1 hour before you can enable the document library with same email address again. if you don't enable "Directory Management Service", you won't have this issue.

There are several other limitation of "Directory Management Service" disucss in this Technet article: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.09.insidesharepoint.aspx?pr=blog

So my suggestion is to not use "Directory Management Service". By taking the "Directory Management Service" out of the picture, the deployment of incoming email of SharePoint is greatly simplied.

 

 

 

Configure Server Farm to Enable Incoming Email

1. Enable and Configure SMTP Server on SharePont Web Front Server

On Windows Server 2008 of SharePoint Web Front End Server

a. Add "Web Server" role to the server and enable the "IIS 6 Managment Compatibility" at the same time.

b. Add "SMTP Server" feature.

c. Run IIS 6 Manager to start SMTP server.

d. Right click the "SMTP Virtual Server". Set "Access" -> "Authentication" -> "Anonymouse Access"

Set "Access" -> "Relay" as

 

 

 

This is for loose security enviornment such as test and dev.

e. Set the maximum email size allowed. I tend to allow email as large as 20 MB in Intranet environment.

 

 

 

f. In IIS6 Manager, right click "domains" -> "New" -> "Domains" to add alias such "abc.com".

2. Enable and Configure SharePonit Incomng Email Settings

As explained in the overview, since the "Directory Management Service" is not used, this should be relatively easy now.

 

3. Enable Document Library Incoming Email Settings

Now goto the "settings" page of document library, under the "Communications" -> "Incomming Email Settings", fill out the form.

 

Test and Troubleshoot the Configuration

To test the configuration, you can take the Exchange server out of the topology by using a SMTP client such as Thunder Bird. Point the outgoing SMTP server to the SharePoint Web Front server running the SMTP Server. Send an email with attachments to the email address you configured in the pervious step.

a. Monitor the email arrives the email drop foler "C:\inetpub\mailroot\drop". When the email arrives via SMTP server, an email file should appear in this folder.

b. Wait for a minute, the email file should disappear if the it is picked up by SharePoint Timer Service.

c. If the email is processed successfully by the SharePoint Timer Service, the file should appear in the corresponding SharePoint document library.

d. If the attached document doesn't show up in the document library, check the SharePoint log file under "C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\Web Server Extensions\12\LOGS" for clues.

Now you can try to use Outlook to send email through your Exchange server. If Exchange server doesn't relay the email to SharePoint server, talk to your Exchange server administrator.