Listening for incoming emails from an Exchange Server.

Question

There is an email account (or possibly multiple accounts) on a Microsoft Exchange server. I want to register/attach to Exchange from a .Net application in order to receive emails from this account. From there the idea is that the emails can be archived on a file system or database, indexed, etc.

Ideally this code should work against both older and the latest version(s) of Exchange.

I'm also interested in any third party solutions to this problem.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Findings so far:

WCF Exchange Server Mail Transport requires Exchange 2007.

Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) looks like a good choice. But it at first glance it seems to be a relatively low level API and therefore I'm concerned about the amount of work required get a MAPI solution working to a high standard. Buying a relatively cheap/simple third party solution using MAPI may be preferrable.

IMAP4. A solution using IMAP could be used on non-excahnge servers. I don't have a requirement for this but if it is a good solution anyway then teh non-exchange is a nice feature to have. Again, concern about low level API and would therefore tend towards a third party solution.

Answer 2

I think WCF Exchange Server Mail Transport or Exchange Web Services is your best bet. You're going to have a hard time finding a solution that works with both Exchange 2007 and earlier versions that doesn't involve programming directly with MAPI or CDO.