WSS 3.0 email

Question

I have set up WSS and a few sites. I have the outgoing email address set as SharePoint@....... When I get a message from the server and try to reply to it it doesnt go anywhere as there is no SharePoint@..... email account. What my question is is this, is there a way to set this up so that emails go to the site owners? that way they can respond accordingly? we will have many different sites and owners and it would be great if I could get this set up like this. Any guidence would be great. Thanks

Answer 1

First off: I don't know if you're aware, but you can override the default outbound SMTP settings on a per-Web Application basis -- you're not limited to just the outbound settings that are assigned from within Central Admin's "Operations" tab. To see what I'm describing, go to "Central Administration" > "Application Management" > "Web Application Outgoing E-Mail Settings." This doesn't give you the full degree of control you're seeking, but it does give you multiple addresses and could be used creatively. For example:

1. You could actually create one or more of the [email protected] e-mail accounts you're describing, configure incoming e-mail within SharePoint, and then associate the SharePoint@..... accounts with a SharePoint list in one of the site collections within each web application. This alone doesn't "push" anything to the site collection owners, but the e-mail enabled lists could be watched by owners (or queried) to determine where owners need to take action.

2. Extending #1, you could create a workflow or EventReceiver on an e-mail enabled list that examined the contents of an incoming e-mail (since messages are entered as new list items and the e-mail message body is mapped into a list field). Assuming you formatted the body of the original outbound e-mail in a way that could be parsed (and included something that could be used as a lookup), the arrival of the e-mail into the list could kick-off a workflow that extracted the lookup field or address and then e-mailed the associated party or parties from within the workflow. This gives you some of the "push" functionality you're seeking, but again -- it's not a complete solution.

E-mail enabling a list is sometimes a contentious topic, as it may require some SMTP changes within your organization and require you to install the SMTP service on one of your farm members. More detail on this topic is discussed on TechNet at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc287879.aspx

I hope this helps and/or gives you some ideas.