Forwarding email to FME Server from another mail server

Liz Sanderson
Liz Sanderson
  • Updated

FME Version

Many organizations use an existing internal or external service for sending and receiving email, such as Microsoft Exchange Server or Gmail. This articles describes how to forward email from those servers to FME Server.

Direct (no forwarding)

If you are not concerned with security, spam or IT departments, then you can configure your firewall to allow open communication port 25 (smtp) on the machine that FME Server is installed. Then you can email the server directly.

Gmail

Gmail allows you to easily define email filters and leverage existing spam control functionality.
Firewall

You will need to configure your firewall to only allow communication to port 25 (smtp) from google servers. Google uses IP addresses in the range 74.125.0.0 to 74.125.255.255

The steps required will vary based on the firewall you are using. For example, with AWS you must configure and apply a security group.

FME Server

Before you can have Gmail forward emails, you need to enable FME Server to receive email. Gmail sends a confirmation code to the forwarded address, which must be provided to Google before forwarding takes affect.

  • Web Interface > Notifications > Topics
  • Create a topic (e.g. incoming_data_to_validate)
  • Click Publications > New
  • Create a new publication of type email.
  • Enter an email username (e.g. validatedata) and select the topic you created.
  • Click Subscriptions > New
  • Add the topic you created, set the Protocol to Logger, and set Log Level to High.
  • Test out the topic by emailing FME Server using the email username you provided and the host name (e.g. validatedata@myfmeserver.com)
  • Open the logger log file to see the email contents near the bottom (<FMEServerDir>\Logs\notifier\subscribers\logger\Logger_###.log)

Filter

Now configure Gmail to forward email to the machine that FME Server is installed on.

First configure a new forwarding address:

Next, define a filter that forwards email based on some criteria:

  • Gmail > Settings > Filters > Create a new filter
  • Enter some filter criteria (e.g. To: fmeserver+validatedata@gmail.com)
  • Click Create filter with this search.
  • Check on Forward it to and select the email address you verified previously.

You should now have a system configured to forward specific emails from Gmail to FME Server.

Microsoft Exchange Server

Filter

If your organization uses an internal Microsoft Exchange Server, then you can configure it to forward email to the machine that FME Server is installed on.

The basic steps for doing this are:

  • Ensure that your DNS has an entry for the FME Server host.
  • Open Exchange Management Console.
  • Create a Contact containing the a FME Server email address (e.g. validatedata@myfmeserver.com)
  • Create a Transport rule that forwards specific email to the contact you created.

You should now have a system configured to forward specific emails from Exchange server to an internal FME Server.

FME Server

Once you have configured email forwarding you will want to configure FME Server to process the messages. The article on Email with FME Server is a good starting point.

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