[Asterisk-Users] Using Exchange to send voicemail message

[Paul Tyreman]

The reason that I would like to set Asterisk up in this way, is because my
exchange server is local on my LAN and for some reason loop-back isn't
working.  This means that when you send an e-mail to
paul@<exchange-address>.com, from within the LAN, it bounces back.  If I
could get Asterisk to send the mail from the exchange server in the first
place this wouldn't be an issuse as the mail would never leave the LAN !

I don't think I'm at the stage of being able to write Linux scripts, as I am
just in the process of learning about the OS.

How do I configure sendmail to realy everything through exchange ?  Does
this mean that Asterisk would need a exchange account, or do you mean that
Asterisk simply passes the message to exchange, and the mail message is sent
via the Exchange SMTP server ?

Thanks again for your help.

Paul.


-----Original Message-----
From: asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com
[mailto:asterisk-users-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of Robert Hajime
Lanning
Posted At: 26 April 2004 05:28
Posted To: Asterisk-Users
Conversation: [Asterisk-Users] Using Exchange to send voicemail message
Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Users] Using Exchange to send voicemail message


Technicaly it can be done.  If you want to pick up a book, learn how to
speak MAPI (the protocol Exchange uses) and write a program/script that gets
the message via STDIN and the recipient from the "To:" header and talks MAPI
to your Exchange server.  Then all you have to do is use the mailcmd=
command in voicemail.conf.  You will have to store the MAPI
hostname/username/password in some configuration file.  Take care of
queueing messages if the Exchange server is down, retry delivery when it
comes up, expire if undeliverable. This is one thing you do not want built
into Asterisk.  Asterisk is busy enough with handling the calls, no need for
email queue management.

Sendmail has all of this done already and has proven itself on the Internet.

Though, my question is, why do you need it generated this way?  Even if the
mailboxes are not on the Exchange server, you can configure sendmail to
relay everything through the Exchange server.  It is a one line change to
the sendmail.cf file.  And the "From:" line is settable via voicemail.cf.

Currently, Asterisk just fork()s, then exec()s, "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t",
passing the email message to sendmail's STDIN.  (done through the popen()
call.)  Sendmail tries to deliver, if it can't, it queues it.  You then have
a background process (/usr/sbin/sendmail -q15m) that runs through the queue
every 15 minutes and manages it. (delivery attempts, expiring...)

Remember, the only protocols the Asterisk speaks natively are VoIP protocols
and the Asterisk management protocol.

<quote who="Paul Tyreman">
> And of course, its SMTP that I need.
>
> I don't want sendmail to send mail to the exchange server, I want to
> use the exchange server to send the mail in the first place !
>
> What I want to do is forget about sendmail, and make an account on the
> exchange server for asterisk to send mail from.
>
> Can that be done ?
>
> Thanks, Paul.


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       -MCP
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