Process Automation

Hi Everyone,


Welcome to Useful Tiny Little Things, a series of topics published in the Process Automation blog. My name is Marcus Miranda and I work at IBM. The purpose of this series is to provide useful simple things that we sometimes have no idea exist. These tips apply to any Tivoli process automation engine based products.
 
In this post I’ll show you how to configure the process automation engine to use a preexisting SMTP Server and how to use email features, specifically the Email Listener feature.

I’ve split the instructions into separate sections below so you can configure the process automation engine and the Email Listener separately.

Configuring the Process Automation Engine to Use the SMTP Server
-Log in as maxadmin
-Select Go To > System Configuration > Platform Configuration > System Properties
-On "Global Properties", filter by "Property Name" the text "smtp" and select the "mail.smtp.host" property
-In the field "Global Value", put the name of your machine (it doesn't work if you put localhost or your IP). You can check it in System Properties on the tab "Computar Name". Look for "Full computer name"
-Mark the "mail.smtp.host" property , click the Live Refresh button then click OK to make your changes available right away.

TESTING
To test whether the configuration is correct, start the SMTP Server, then in a process automation engine product, select Go To > Administration > Resources > People and try setting a new password to anyone registered.
If it is configured correctly, when you click OK to set the password, a new mail should be sent to the person’s email.

Configuring the Email Listener
To configure the Email Listener, a POP email server is required. Any public POP email should work. After the POP email account is created, take note of the email’s address, password, POP server and port (the default port is 110).

-Log in as maxadmin
-Select Go To > Administration > Resources > People, choose anyone but maxadmin and configure the field "Primary Email" with the email (the email created above or the one you already have with an open POP server)
-Select Go To > System Configuration > Platform Configuration > Email Listeners and click the new button
-Complete the fields with the information that you have.
    Note that the field "Mail Server" is the POP Server Address (like POP3.server.com, where server.com is usually the public mail domain name) and the field "Protocol" should be POP with the correct port configured.
    Note as well, that the workflow should be set to LSNRBP. (If the workflow is not available on the Select Value list, Go To > System Configuration > Platform Configuration > Workflow Designer, select the LSNRBP workflow then activate and enable it).
    Using the "Schedule" field you can define how often the email listener will run.
    After the configuration, the new email listener should look like this:

-Save your new Email Listener, and then click Select Action > Activate/Deactivate Listener to activate it.
-Click the Select Action menu again, select Security Settings, add a new row as shown bellow:

-Click OK

Using Email Listener to create Service Requests
-Make sure the SMTP Server is running.
-Send a test email to the email address you configured in the Configurating the Email Listener section.
-Wait the Email Listener to run. If everything is correct, a new Service Request should be created with the Subject and the message body of the test email, as the Service Request Summary and Details respectively.

Well, that's it for today!
I hope it helps.

Marcus Miranda