Introduction:

Many times when building SharePoint development environment; we need to do testing for emails for workflows, alerts, logging & other stuff. Windows Server 2003 was supporting configuring pop3 email which was amazing; but for some reason; it was removed in Windows Server 2008, in this article I will give you a simple way to configure SharePoint development environment testing emails.

Technology and environment preparation

• I am using Windows Server 2008 R2 (Windows Server 2008 should work, and windows Server 2012 Should work as well,I would appreciate if somebody confirm this in a comment)
• I am using SharePoint 2010 (SharePoint 2007 & 2013 versions should work as well, I would appreciate if somebody try it and confirm this in a comments area)
• I am using a single box development environment (SharePoint + SQL Server + Active Directory + Outlook)

Assumptions:

• Users who reads this should be familiar with Windows Server, SharePoint and SQL Server basic administration tasks.
• During this tutorial I will be accessing SharePoint Content Database which is not a good practice to be done in production, (Use this technique on development)

Plan:

1. Install Mail enable tool (from http://www.mailenable.com/)
2. Create new mail boxes & make sure that outlook is working.
3. Configure SharePoint stuff
4. Do the full test

Solution:

1. Install Mail enable tool (from http://www.mailenable.com/)

– Go to mail enable (http://www.mailenable.com/) and download the Standard Free Edition.

– Start the simple installation process as the following:

– Double Click on the EXE file you will see this form, Keep this as it is.

– Keep this as it is.

– Keep this as it is.

– Keep this as it is.

– Keep this as it is.

– Put what ever domain you like to have (this way my email will be jamil@dev.net).

– Keep it as it is (The application is smart enough to get your default DNS).

– Next…

– I cleared this for simplicity (I like to use outlook more than web access).

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2. Create new mail boxes & make sure that outlook is working.

– Go to start menu and type mail…

– Expand the nodes… You may need to Wait for 5 minutes until you see this menu.

– Create new email.

– Configure outlook.

– Open outlook

– Be careful to use the same parameter here.

-Test the email now.

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 3. Configure SharePoint stuff

– Assuming that users are already created in active directory; Go to site collection that you want to work on and add those users to it (i.e. into contributor group).

– Then go to SharePoint site collection content database that you want to work on (in my case WSS_Content), find a table called UserInfo.

– Edit the column (tp_Email) for the users that you want to set emails for.

– Go to Central Administration || System Settings || Configure Outgoing Email and type (<Machine Name>) in Outbound SMTP: (Ignoring this step will make alert button missing on document library).

– You are done!

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4. Do the Full Test

– Login with Jamil and register your self on a List Alerts to test.

– Keep it as default (any changes).

– You will receive an email telling you that you have registered in this library on outlook.

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Conclusion:

This is very important to give the facility to a developer to Test Email Communications (templates, parameters, timing…) and I find this way the most convenient and fast way of doing this job.