Symptoms
I have a question about K2 email in our Development environment. They would apparently like to be able to have their actions in K2 email to destinations outside of their development environment (e.g., over to Corporate email accounts). Currently they cannot do that as the developers use Office 365 hosted mailboxes in their department and there's no Exchange server to access in Development.
When we installed K2 in our development and QA environments, we used a development SMTP server to verify that smart actions can email to a development mailbox, but now they would like the ability to test various things that email to people outside of Development. Current policies prevent email from this setup in Development from coming into our Corporate environment. Maybe they need an actual Exchange server to do everything they want to do (in our Production and UAT environments, which have on-premise Exchange, this is not an issue with K2).
My question - can you point me to the requirements that K2 has for email resources? Do we need an Exchange server for the Development environment in order to accomplish what they want?
Diagnoses
K2 currently supports both SMTP and Exchange mail integration.
Resolution
You do not need a separate Exchange server for the K2 Development environment. You can use an existing Exchange mail server if one already exist. However, if you plan on using the K2 SmartActions feature then it's required that you have a dedicated mailbox in Exchange for the SmartActions service account a.k.a the 'Listener' account - this account will also double as the "From" email address account.
Please keep in mind that the "From" email address, in a non-SmartActions set-up, generally does not require an actual or dedicated mailbox in Exchange unless there is a requirement for it on your end.
As far as what kinds of K2 email operations require Exchange/etc.:
- For basic K2 email functionality i.e. Client Event Email and Email Event - you can use either SMTP or Exchange.
- For K2 SmartActions and Exchange Integration - you need to use Exchange.
For more information on K2 SmartActions, please see: http://help.k2.com/onlinehelp/K2blackpearl/UserGuide/current/webframe.html_K2_SmartActions.html
For information on K2 integrates with Exchange, see the following KBs:
http://help.k2.com/en/kb001385.aspx
http://help.k2.com/kb001189
In regards to how many K2 service mailboxes are required for the application - the only time you will need an actual mailbox is if you are planning on using the K2 SmartActions feature, as noted above.
Hope this helps.
