Overview of PageGate Email Interface Transcript for Video:
Welcome to the overview of PageGate’s GetMail module. In this tutorial, we’ll be going over what the GetMail module is and touching on how it does what it does.
PageGate has a fully functional mail server engine as a core part of the program but without the GetMail module, you only ever access the outbound functions of this mail server. The GetMail module unlocks the inbound portion of our mail server engine as well as a few features associated with the mail server in general. This allows you to receive SMTP/Email traffic and translate it in to outbound messages in a different format. For example, you could email a message to recipients and/or groups in PageGate to deliver as a message to cell phones, pagers, updates to social media and/or other email addresses. In short, the GetMail module allows you to receive email to translate in to messages to your recipients and groups and there are two ways this can be done.
First, we have the most efficient method of email transport: domain or subdomain hosting. Since PageGate’s mail server engine allows the program to function like a mail server, it can host a domain or sub-domain. To have PageGate host that domain or sub-domain, you’ll first need to create it, then have the MX record for that domain redirected to the IP address of the PageGate server. As soon as you do, all recipients and groups in the PageGate Admin become valid email addresses on that domain.
For example, let’s say we have an email domain of example.com; we could ask the mail server administrator for that domain to create messaging.example.com, then redirect the MX record of that new sub-domain to the IP of the PageGate server. Then let’s also say that we have a group called it_alerts in PageGate. We could then send an email to it_alerts@messaging.example.com and that email would come in to PageGate and be delivered to every member of the it_alerts group. Again, this is the more reliable and efficient method of receiving email and is what we would recommend using.
Next, we have the POP mail collection method of receiving email. If you can have a POP mailbox, or series of POP mailboxes, created on a mail server, you can tie each POP mailbox to a recipient or group in PageGate. For example, let’s say that we have a POP mailbox of alarms@example.com created. We could then tie alarms@example.com to any recipient or group in PageGate. Every minute, PageGate checks the email address to see if there are any messages in the mailbox. If there are, those messages are read in and delivered to whatever recipient or group this mailbox has been tied to.
So, those are the two methods of bringing email messages in to PageGate with the GetMail module. Now let’s go over the interface window.
Enabled, obviously enough, determines whether this module is turned off or on. Enabled should be checked if you’re going to use the GetMail module.
The Local Domain field configures the domain name PageGate will use when receiving traffic and also determines what domain PageGate will use to identify where your traffic came from. When having PageGate host a domain or sub-domain, this field must match the domain or sub-domain the program will be processing traffic for.
Everything from the ‘Relay All Mail’ option down is not used for incoming traffic and instead controls the outbound portion of PageGate’s mail server engine.
Since PageGate has a mail server engine, if port 25 is open and its public IP address is part of the SPF record for your email domain, you can deliver email directly from the PageGate server rather than relaying it through your Exchange or other SMTP server. If you’re using direct delivery, you can choose to use the system’s DNS servers or you can specify a static set of DNS servers. Alternatively, you can check ‘Relay All Mail’ and configure the program to relay its outbound SMTP traffic through the specified SMTP server.
Also, enabling the GetMail module unlocks the Email sub-section of your recipients and groups.
The ‘Mailbox Name’ field controls the name of the mailbox that PageGate will accept email for on behalf of this recipient or group. The mailbox name will always match the recipient name by default and this value controls the part of the email address before the @.
For example, let’s say that you’re having PageGate host the subdomain sms.emscenter.com and that you want to send a message to a group named ‘supervisors’. You would send an email to supervisors@sms.emscenter.com
However, you could edit the mailbox name of the group to shiftsupervisors and the email would need to be sent to shiftsupervisors@sms.emscenter.com
This brings us to the ‘Email Aliases’ section. This section allows you to specify multiple mailbox names that should be associated with this recipient or group. So, to take our earlier example, let’s say that we want PageGate to accept both supervisors and shiftsupervisors for the group. We would go in to the Email sub-section of the ‘supervisors’ group and specify one of the two names as the mailbox. Since it’s a bit easier to track, we recommend using the recipient or group name as the mailbox names. Then click on ‘Email Aliases’ and add every mailbox name that should be tied to this recipient or group. When finished, click Apply.
Next we have the ‘Forward Copy To’ field. If an email address is entered in to this field, a copy of any message sent to this recipient or group will be forwarded to the specified address. This is most often used when a recipient wants a message delivered both to their device and email but you don’t want to create two recipients (one SMS, one SMTP) to do so. This feature can also be used, just as an example, to forward a copy of messages to shift or station supervisors and other personnel.
And last, we have ‘Enable POP Access to Messages’. If this option is enabled, PageGate will host a POP accessible mailbox on the local server. This would allow email clients, as well as other programs that can use POP, to check the mailbox stored on the PageGate server for messages sent to this recipient or group. After enabling POP Access, set the password required to access the mailbox.
This concludes the overview of PageGate’s GetMail module.
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