How to use IBM App Connect with an email service

Supported product and API versions

To find out which product and API versions this connector supports, see Detailed System Requirements on the IBM Support page.

Connecting to an email server

To connect App Connect to an email server account that you want App Connect to use, you need the following connection details:

Protocol

Select the protocol that is used to connect to the Email Server. By default, the protocol is set to SMTP, which is used to send an email. Select POP3 or IMAP to retrieve emails.

Note: To use the IMAP protocol with some email servers, you need to configure IMAP settings in the email server. For example, for Gmail see https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229.

Email

Specify the email address for the account that you are connecting to; for example, user1@test1.com

Password

Specify the password for the specified email address.

Note: For some email servers, you need to generate a third-party app password and use that instead of the original account password. For example, to connect App Connect to Yahoo you use a password for App Connect as a third-party custom app that was generated on the Manage app passwords page of the Yahoo account.

Hostname and port

Specify the hostname or IP address and the port number of the email server in the format host:port. The default port of SMTP is 587; POP3 is 995; and IMAP is 993. For example, if your hostname is https://www.example.com and if you are using SMTP protocol, then the value is https://www.example.com:587.

Enable TLS

Whether to perform implicit TLS connections with the email server.

Private network connection

Select the name of a private network agent that App Connect uses to connect to your private network. This list is populated with the names of private network agents that are created on the Private networks page. For more information, see Connecting to a private network.

To connect to a Email endpoint from the App Connect Designer Connect > Applications and APIs page (previously the Catalog page) for the first time, expand Email, then click Connect. For more information, see Managing accounts.

General considerations

Before you use App Connect Designer with Email, take note of the following considerations:

• (General consideration) You can see lists of the trigger events and actions that are available on the Applications and APIs page of the App Connect Designer.

  For some applications, the events and actions depend on the environment and whether the connector supports configurable events and dynamic discovery of actions. If the application supports configurable events, you see a Show more configurable events link under the events list. If the application supports dynamic discovery of actions, you see a Show more link under the actions list.

• (General consideration) If you are using multiple accounts for an application, the set of fields that is displayed when you select an action for that application can vary for different accounts. In the flow editor, some applications always provide a curated set of static fields for an action. Other applications use dynamic discovery to retrieve the set of fields that are configured on the instance that you are connected to. For example, if you have two accounts for two instances of an application, the first account might use settings that are ready for immediate use. However, the second account might be configured with extra custom fields.

Events and actions

Email events

These events are for changes in this application that trigger a flow to start completing the actions in the flow.

Email actions

Your flow completes these actions on this application.

Emails

Retrieve emails metadata

Update email

Delete email

Send email

Move email

Download email content

Folders

Retrieve email folders