This task controls the sending of email notifications by ExtraView. In previous versions this was a separate process to ExtraView. From version 6.1, the BatchMail task can be started and stopped within ExtraView, and the log can be examined. It is recommended that this task be set to START_ON_BOOT, so that it initializes automatically when ExtraView starts. The parameters to set up and utilize BatchMail are as follows:
| Parameter | Explanation |
| ALLOW_ENCRYPTION | This flags whether email encryption is to be set or not. The default is NO |
| BatchMail.properties | This configuration file is used for standalone BatchMail operation. If you are running BatchMail from within this menu, this file is not needed. It is provided for backwards compatibility with previous versions of ExtraView, which did not run BatchMail as a task within ExtraView. See the Installation Guide for details of the settings within this file. |
| CHECK_CONNECTION_PAUSE | This defines the number of seconds to wait when contacting your mail server, before assuming there is no connection. The default is 30 seconds |
| ENCRYPTION_DIR | The directory where the encryption program is stored. This may be an absolute pathname or a relative pathname. Relative paths are relative to the WEB-INF directory on the server |
| ENCRYPTION_SCRIPT |
The script to be used to generate the encrypted result (either file or written to standard out). To test this execute the following from the scripts folder: ./encrypt.sh |
| ENCRYPTED_TO_STANDARD_OUT | If this has a value of "yes" then BatchMail reads the encrypted standard out, otherwise if there is a value of "no" it reads the encrypted file |
| FORCE_DIRECTORY_RELOAD | This may be YES or NO. It is used principally for NFS mounted directories which are used to store the outgoing emails. Occasionally, the directory entries may be cached and become stale, leading to ExtraView seeing out-of-date information. When this setting is YES, ExtraView forces a re-read of the directory for all operations. |
| LOG_FILE_MAX_RETAINED | This is the maximum number of "rolled over" log files that are retained on the server before they are deleted. The default is 5 |
| LOG_FILE_MAX_SIZE | This is the maximum size to which the log file is allowed to grow, before it is "rolled over" and a new log file created. The old file is retained on the file system. The default is 20,000 kiloBytes |
| LOG_FILE_PATH_NAME | This is the path to the BatchMail log file, held within the properties file. |
| LOG_FILE_PATH_NAME_ABSOLUTE | This is used for standalone installations on Microsoft Windows, or when running in a war file |
| LOG_LEVEL | The level of logging written to the log file. The standard operational value is 6, and a number up to 12 can be used to produce increasing amounts of debug information in the log, for debugging purposes |
| MAIL_DIR | This is the absolute or relative path to the mail directory where outgoing emails are stored temporarily, defined in the Configuration.properties file. This must be set. Relative paths are relative to the WEB-INF directory on the server |
| MAIL_PASSWORD | When the outbound SMTP server requires a username and password to authenticate before sending the email, this parameter provides the password |
| MAIL_PORT | The MAIL_PORT is typically 25 or 465, depending on whether you are using a secure connection |
| MAIL_SERVER | The domain name to your mail server. This must be set |
| MAIL_USER | When the outbound SMTP server requires a username and password to authenticate before sending the email, this parameter provides the username |
| NOTIFICATION |
This setting can be either NOTIFY_NEVER (by itself), or any combination of the following with each setting separated by semicolon(;) :
For example, the setting might be NOTIFICATION=NOTIFY_SUCCESS;NOTIFY_FAILURE |
| PAUSE_AFTER_NUM_OF_EMAIL | This setting pauses the EVMail task after sending the number of mails in the value of the setting. This pauses the EVMail task to stop it commanding all the resources on the server for long periods of time, such as might happen with a mass update of many issues sending out thousands of notifications in a very short period of time. An alternative method is to use the PAUSE_BETWEEN_SEND setting, It is recommended that you use only one of the two settings. |
| PAUSE_BETWEEN_SEND | This is the number of milliseconds to wait between the sending of each mail notifications, to allow the server to process other tasks. Similar to the PAUSE_AFTER_NUM_OF_EMAIL setting, it reduces the load on the server. It is recommended that you use only one of the two settings. The default is 200 milliseonds |
| POLL_RATE | The number of seconds to pause between checking for emails to be sent. The default is 5 seconds |
| RECIPIENTS_PER_CONNECTION | Most mail servers have a limit in how many emails they will send with a single connection, typically 100. Within sites that generate a large volume of email, a BatchMail configuration property is available to prevent this causing a problem. The property is named RECIPIENTS_PE R_CONNECTION. BatchMail queues the sending of mail to make sure no more than this number of mails are generated at one time. |
| RETURN_OPTION | This defines the action to take with returned mail. You can elect to either return the full email or just the headers. The value can be either RETURN_FULL or RETURN_HDRS |
| SECURE_PORT | This is a dedicated port number for this application. The default is 879. The number must always be less than 1024 |
| SEND_TO_ALL_ONCE_ADDR |
This is used in conjunction with SEND_TO_ALL_ONCE setting to determine whether recipients of email notifications will see the other addressees who received the email notification.
The default for this optional setting is BCC. |
| SEND_TO_ALL_ONCE |
The default for this optional setting is false. It may be set to a value of true, in which case you can set the SEND_TO_ALL_ONCE_ADDR to a value of TO or BCC. If set to TO, the mail addresses of the recipients will appear in the TO header of the outgoing email, as opposed to the BCC.
It should be understood that this implies that all recipients will receive the email as if they are in the user role of the sender, as it is a single email that is generated, as opposed to an email being generated for each user, customized to their user role. |
| SERVER_FAILED_PAUSE | This is the number of seconds to wait after a failed connection before retrying. The default is 60 seconds |
| SIGNING_SCRIPT |
The script to be used to generate the signed result (either file or written to standard out). To test this, execute the following from the scripts folder: ./sign.sh |
| TRANSPORT | Use either smtp or smtps for a secure connection if this is configured on your mail server |
| XML_LOG_FLAG | The default for this is FALSE. If you set it to true, the log will be created in an XML format |
