Symptoms

When supporting K2 services quite often it is necessary to check outgoing email traffic generated by K2. I.e.:

To whom and when emails were sent?

With which text/content?

Was something sent at all?

etc.

By default, all emails are being sent from mailbox associated with K2 Service account and nothing is being logged/saved. For tracking and troubleshooting purposes it is necessary for all outgoing emails from this mailbox to be saved and to have an opportunity to search through sent emails by recipient name, date, email subject and text.

Is there some recommended approach to accomplish this?
 

Diagnoses

Potential options:

1) Configure authorization for email server in K2 instead of using anonymous mode. When sending of emails to Exchange configured with use of authorization using K2 Service account instead of anonymous mode, all emails will be saved in Outgoing email folder of K2 service account on Exchange, so that it will be possible to open Outlook and perform search for emails.

2) Setup SMTP relay on K2 application server (using built-in Windows Server feature) which will bypass all the emails through itself and save all emails as files, whereas actual email delivery will be performed by real Exchange servers.

3) It is also possible to setup all email events so that they additionally sent emails to K2 service account or some other address using BCC field. But this approach will require configuring each and every one of events and event not configured this way will be left out of sight. This option can be considered for environments without Exchange. Possible limitation of this approach could be use of smartactions as those likely will not be covered using this approach (or you may need to set up sending BCC emails to some additional mailbox to avoid confusion).
 

Resolution

From options listed above, option 1 is preferable because of the following:

- Performing authentication on Exchange for K2 service account it is recommended practice

- This option does not require additional components (as in case of option 2), though it will likely require involvement of Exchange/email administration group for configuring

- Exchange email tracking functionality may be useful in emails monitoring scenario

- Ability to search for emails by way of simple connection to Exchange mailbox simplifies this task (especially taking into account ability to use Outlook Web Access).

In general option 1 is most appropriate for described purpose for those clients who have Exchange in their environments.