Mail relay

Use the IBM® Rational® ClearQuest® EmailRelay service to implement a private relay service to forward email requests to a server that is registered for Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server access.

Some organizations strictly control the access to SMTP servers. Restricting access to the SMTP servers reduces the risk of someone using the SMTP servers to send unsolicited bulk email. But, the restricted access prevents ClearQuest clients from sending email notifications through an SMTP server. For the ClearQuest clients to access the SMTP servers, each ClearQuest client computer would have to register its IP addresses with the SMTP server or with a firewall that surrounds the SMTP server, which is impractical. Instead, you can consider these two options:

Implement your own SMTP server for ClearQuest email.
Implement a private relay service to forward the email request to a server that is registered for SMTP server access. The target server cannot be an SMTP relay. Otherwise, the problem of unsolicited bulk email would still exist.

You can implement a private relay service in the EmailPlus package by configuring it use the SMTP Relay or PostOffice Relay. The EmailPlus package uses the ClearQuest EmailRelay service to support these email relay modes. The ClearQuest EmailRelay service is installed as part of the ClearQuest Web installation. You must configure EmailRelay based on your ClearQuest database, your SMTP email server, and EmailPlus Relay mode.

The following table compares the characteristics of SMTP Relay and PostOffice Relay.

Table 1. A comparison of SMTP Relay and PostOffice Relay
SMTP Relay	PostOffice Relay
Email is sent when the record is committed.	Email is sent after the ClearQuest database is queried for email to be sent.
Email delivery is not guaranteed. Email can be lost because the SMTP mail server is down or a communication error.	Email delivery is guaranteed. Email data is stored in the ClearQuest database until the email is sent. Note: If your SMTP Email server fails to send the email after accepting the email data, the email will be lost. EmailRelay cannot prevent such issues.
No extra records are stored in ClearQuest.	Email data is stored in a ClearQuest database as a record. The record is deleted when the email is sent.
No queries are run on the ClearQuest database. The email data is streamed from the EmaiPlus package to the EmailRelay service.	EmailRelay must periodically query the ClearQuest database for new email data to send.
There is no need to access the ClearQuest Web server.	EmailRelay must have access to the ClearQuest Web server.

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