By default TEAMS-RDS is not configured to send jobs or receive job logs via email. In order to enable this feature, TEAM-RDS need to be configured to use a dedicated email account. The email account may be on either an in-house email server, such as Microsoft Exchange, or on a web email service, such as Google’s Gmail. (using pop/imap or SSL pops/imaps).
Pre-requisites:
- The dedicated email account must have enabled the POP/IMAP protocol (for retrieving emails) and SMTP protocol (for sending jobs via email).
- In order to edit the configuration files, the user must have administrative privileges on the server hosting TEAMS-RDS. Due to the location of the configuration files, administrators may not be able to edit the files directly in those directories unless the text editor is opened with administrative privileges. We recommend copying the two configuration files to a user owned folder, update them and copy them back to the ‘%RDS_HOME%/conf’ folder.
There are two steps to setup TEAMS-RDS for emails:
- Edit ‘%RDS_HOME%/conf/mail.properties’ with proper email server host name and protocol ports
- Edit ‘%RDS_HOME%/conf/rdsProperties.xml’
- to specify the email’s subject that the client will send for which the TEAMS-RDS server polls periodically
- to specify whether user wants to send the jobs and receive session logs via email
%RDS_HOME% refers to the RDS installation directory:
- For 32-bit installations,
- Windows Server 2003: “C:\Program Files\Qualtech Systems\RDS”
- Windows Server 2008: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Qualtech Systems\RDS”
- For 64-bit installation:
- Windows Server 2003: “C:\Program Files\Qualtech Systems\RDS”
- Windows Server 2008: “C:\Program Files\Qualtech Systems\RDS”
- In Linux: /opt/rds
1. Editing “%RDS_HOME%/conf/mail.properties” file
Enter the POP/IMAP/POPS/IMAPS email account details to retrieve session logs from email server
To retrieve session logs via email server, TEAMS-RDS polls the email server periodically for any incoming logs via the specified protocol. Open the file in a text editor, and edit the protocol as shown in Figure 1 below, at the top of the mail.properties file. Uncomment one of the blocks (i.e., remove the character ‘#’ from the beginning of the lines) to specify the email protocol supported by the email server so that TEAMS-RDS server can retrieve emails containing session logs. Note: If more than one block is uncommented then the last block will take effect.
Figure 1 Edit Applicable Block
The default ports for POP and IMAP protocols are 995 and 993 respectively. They can vary in your organization. So please contact your IT department.
Enter the SMTP (Send Mail Transfer Protocol) email server details to send jobs via email
Enter the SMTP (Send Mail Message Protocol) to send jobs to field engineers using TEAMS-PackNGo and/or TEAMATE applications on their smart phones or laptops respectively. See Figure 2.
Figure 2 Enter SMTP Connection Parameters
2. Editing ‘%RDS_HOME%/conf/rdsProperties.xml’ file to enable sending jobs via emails and for email subject to retrieve emails containing logs
Open the rdsProperties.xml file in a text editor (may require administrative privilege), and enter the email account to be used to send job notifications to field users, and receive the session logs from the TEAMS-PackNGo and TEAMATE users as shown in Figure 3, and Figure 4 below respectively.
For PackNGo settings, search for the text ‘service.packngo.resultsemail.to’ in the rdsproperties.xml, and edit as shown in Figure 3. Users can edit the email address to use for sending the job, and the subject lines expected from PackNGo app (so that TEAMS-RDS can poll the email account and look for only those emails with that subject). The subject line should be customized for each TEAMS-RDS server in the organization so that each server can look for the email meant for that server. Users can also specify how often the email account need to be polled for session logs using the cron expression, and also specify at what milestones of the troubleshooting job, the PackNGo needs to send the session logs (for example at the job start, at job close, when job is suspended and when the job is resumed etc.,).
Figure 3: Editing rdsProperties.xml in TEAMS-RDS configuration folder
Similarly, to be able to send job emails to TEAMATE and receive session logs from field TEAMATEs search for the text ‘service.teamate.outlook.email.to´ in the rdsproperties.xml and edit as shown in Figure 4. Users can edit the email address, and the subject lines expected from TEAMATEs so that TEAMS-RDS can poll the email account and look for only those emails with that subject. Users can also specify how often the email account need to be polled for session logs using the cron expression, and at what milestones of the job the TEAMATE needs to send the session logs (for example at the job start, at job close, when job is suspended and when the job is resumed etc.,).
Figure 4: Enabling Emails and Session Logs for TEAMATE clients
This concludes setting up the TEAMS-RDS server.
Contact Information
In you require further assistance, contact our support team at support@teamqsi.com.
