Setting Options for Incoming E-mail Handling

Quite often an application needs to process e-mails arriving to the business’s e-mail address and perform certain functions automatically based on the e-mail contents. For example, a customer relationship management system might register all e-mails from customers in its database, assign a unique ID to the e-mails and automatically reply to customers with the details about their request.

In Aware IM it is possible to configure an application to process incoming e-mails and perform the necessary actions. As mentioned before all communication with the external parties in Aware IM is performed either via notifications or service requests (see also Defining Intelligent Business Objects). Incoming e-mails are no exception – Aware IM treats them as notifications sent to the Aware IM application via a special channel. Once incoming e-mails have been delivered to Aware IM as notifications Aware IM evaluates any rules attached to the notification as usual. It is up to the configurator to define the appropriate rules.

All that the configurator has to do to make sure that the application handles incoming e-mails is turn on the e-mail handling capability for the business space version, set the properties of the incoming e-mail channel and define the rules that deal with the incoming e-mail notification. This is explained in more detail below:

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Starting from version 5.7 it is now possible to handle incoming e-mails dynamically from a process. To do this select the business space version in the Configuration Tree and select the “Add Incoming Email Account” object from the Edit menu. This will create a special object that stores values of the incoming email account. You can use instances of this object in the DISCONNECT FROM EMAIL action in a process. For more details see the CONNECT TO EMAIL and DISCONNECT FROM EMAIL actions in the Rule Language Guide.

To turn on incoming e-mail handling capability for a business space version follow the steps below:

  1. Double click on the node representing the business space version to start editing it (or select File/Open from the menu).
  2. Click on the “Incoming emails” property displayed in the Elements Properties window The “Incoming E-mails” dialog will be displayed.
  3. Specify the following properties in the “Incoming E-mails” Dialog:
    1. Select the “The system will handle incoming e-mails” radio button to turn on the e-mail handling capability.
    2. Select the “Use values below” radio button and provide the following values:
      1. Specify the DNS name of the mail server that will receive e-mails in the Mail Host text box.
      2. Specify the credentials (the user name and password) of your account on the mail server.
      3. Specify the e-mail protocol supported by your mail server and the port number (check with your e-mail provider if not sure).
    3. Alternatively you can select the “Use values from SystemSettings object” radio button. In this case the system administrator will have to provide the values for the DNS name, e-mail protocol and user credentials when the application is initialized – see Setting Initial Values of the System.
  4. Press OK on the “Incoming E-mails” Dialog.

The Configuration Tool will automatically add the following business objects and notification into the business space version:

IncomingEmail notification

This is the notification that represents an incoming e-mail. This notification has a special structure that you cannot change (you can define other attributes but you cannot change the existing ones). The attributes of the notification contain the properties of the received e-mail, such as who it is from, when it was received etc. Any rules that you want to specify to handle incoming e-mails must be attached to the events of this notification – see Adding/Editing Rules. You can check values of the pre-defined attributes of the notification in your rules and perform the appropriate actions.

To turn off the incoming e-mail handling capability for the business space version select the “Incoming emails” property of the business space version to bring up the “Incoming Emails” dialog and select “The system will not handle incoming emails” radio button.