• General
  • Purpose
  • Principles
  • Usage of Email in the KACE K1000 appliance
• 2007 Or Newer
  • Steps to setup:
    • 1. Configure K1000 to Accept Mail
    • 2. Create a mailbox or contact that your employees can address via Active Directory
    • 3. Create a contact that represents the K1000
    • 4. Create a Transport Rule to redirect mail to the K1000
• 2003 Or Older
  • Resources
  • Setup Exchange On 2003:
  • 1. Configure K1000 to accept mail on Exchange 2003
  • 2. Create a user that your employees can address via Active Directory lookup
  • 3. If necessary, Create a Virtual SMTP Server
  • 4.Create or modify a connection to your SMTP server
• Troubleshooting
  • Test Outgoing Mail
    • Test incoming mail to K1000 SMTP Server
  • Reading logs for information
  • Errors

General

Purpose

The purpose of this document is to help you send mail TO the KACE K1000 appliance from your Microsoft Exchange Server. If you want receive mail from your K1000 then read "I am not receiving emails from my KACE K1000 Apliance"

For a simpler method of sending mail to your K1000 appliance using only DNS you may ALSO want to read this first and then come back"Sending Email to Your KACE K1000 appliance Helpdesk"

Principles

The KACE K1000 appliance has a built-in SMTP server that you can use to both send mail IN to the K1000 and OUT of the K1000. It does NOT have a POP server.

The way that it accepts mail in is by having its own domain that other SMTP servers deliver the mail to. Since the K1000s domain is usually only an internal domain it will be your SMTP servers delivering mail to it. In the case of this document those mail servers are Exchange.

The way that it sends mail out is either of two methods. It can use an external SMTP server, or use DNS to deliver mail, but not both.

Usage of Email in K1000

Mail can be used in any of the following areas. These topics are covered in other articles or the documentation

• Helpdesk Ticket creation and updates (inbound email creates tickets, outbound emails contain ticket updates)
• Email alerts and notifications (outbound only) [not covered here]
• Administrator notifications (outbound only) [not covered here]

2007 Or Newer

Steps to setup:

1. Configure the K1000 to accept mail
2. Create a mailbox or contact that your employees can address via Active Directory
3. Create a contact that represents your K1000
4. Create a Transport Rule to redirect mail to the K1000

1.Configure K1000 to Accept Mail

The K1000 appliance Exim server is always running in this mode by default. The only thing needed here is to configure the email addresses that will be accepted.

Setup a queue and each queue has an email address:

1. Go to the Help Desk->Configuration->Queues
2. Confirm that the domain suffix for the email address column is correct (ie. Kbox.mycompany.com) (red)
3. Type in the name of the Queue (green)
4. Type in the email address for the queue (orange).
5. If desired type in an alternate email address which will modify the from of email sent from the K1000 (blue). This is the email address that your end users will use

NOTE: The value circled in orange MUST match the prefix of the address circled in blue.

2.Create a mailbox or contact that you remployees can address via Active Directory

In Active Directory (or via the Exchange Management console) you should create a mailbox or contact with the address that you want your end users to address. In our example that will be help@mycompany.com

3.Create a contact that represents the K1000

In Active Directory (or via the Exchange Management console) you should create a contact (not a mailbox) with the address of your KACE K1000 appliance. This is the red circle in the above screenshot. In our example that will be help@k1100.mycompany.com.

Make sure that this user's primary address is as above. You may need to turn off automatic updates of recipient policy to accomplish this.

Also you will want to hide this user from address lists so choose the option Hide from Exchange address lists

4.Create a Transport Rule to redirect mail to the K1000

In the Exchange Management Console:

• go to Organization->Hub Transport
• click on the Transport Rules tab
• Select New Transport Rule
• On Introduction set it any name and make sure it is enabled
• On Conditions step choose sent to and follow the hyperlink and locate the user with the address help@mycompany.com
• On Actions step choose redirect the message to and follow the hyperlink and locate the user with the address help@k1100.mycompany.com
• Complete the rule

Your rule is now ready

2003 Or Older

Resources

• How to Specify an Address Space for the Connector at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996761.aspx
• How to Create an SMTP Connector to Route Mail to a Specific Host at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb124055.aspx
• How to Create an SMTP Connector at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa996625.aspx

Setup on Exchange 2003:

1. Configure the KACE K1000 appliance to accept mail
2. Create a user that your employees can address via Active Directory
3. Create a Virtual SMTP server (if necessary)
4. Create or modify a connector to the SMTP server

1.Configure K1000 to accept mail on Exchange 2003

The KACE K1000 appliance Exim server is always running in this mode by default. The only thing needed here is to configure the email addresses that will be accepted.

In the K1000 version 4.0 and newer, you setup a queue and each queue has an email address. In version 3.3 and older, there is only one queue, thus one email address.

1. Go to the Help Desk Configuration page
2. Confirm that the domain suffix for the email address column is correct (ie. Kbox.yourcompany.com) (red)
3. Version 4: Type in the name of the Queue (green)
4. Type in the email address for the queue (orange)
5. If desired type in an alternate email address which will modify the from of email sent from the K1000 (blue)

2.Create a user that your employees can address via Active Directory lookup

In Exchange there are two main ways that you might normally create a user that can route mail to the KACE K1000 appliance: First, you could create a user account with an exchange mailbox and one or more resolvable addresses for the K1000 appliance. Second, you could create a contact that just has one email address but no priviledges in the system and very little configuration. We prefer a a way to create a contact that has more than one resolvable addresses for the K1000 appliance. We will create a user that has multiple addresses but no Exchange mailbox.

Steps:

1. Create a typical user (see Active Directory docs)
2. In the user manager, rght-click on the user and perform “exchange tasks” and choose “delete mailbox
3. In the user manager, right-click on the user and perform “exchange tasks” and choose “Establish Email address”
4. Reopen the properties of the user and select the “Email Addressess” tab
5. Add addresses needed. The primary must be for the KACE K1000 appliance address, the other are practically osmetic to allow for naming consistency in your network.

3.If necessary, Create a Virtual SMTP Server

(see your exchange documentation on this)

4.Create or modify a connection to your SMTP server

1. Bridgehead points to existing virtual SMTP Server and uses DNS routing. If you do not have an existing Virtual Server then create one first – see above
   
   If DNS routing is not working for you then you can use the setting "Forward all mail to the following smart hosts" and input the IP address of the KACE K1000 appliance as such [xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx] (e..g [10.1.1.10])
2. The Address Space is defined as SMTP for address kbox.<local.domain> (i.e. fully qualified K1000 server name). Note that an asterisk may be required in your configuration like this *kbox.<local.domain>
3. You probably want to scope the connector for "entire organization" and leave "relay" turned off.
4. The "cost" level of the address space should be leveled per the existing exchange configuration. Typically you will have other connectors so created a K1000 appliance connector with cost setting of "1" and moved other connectors to a higher cost level. That way, this one would be filtered first and no K1000 appliance mail would accidentally leave your network.
   

Troubleshooting

Test Outgoing Mail

not covered here. See Purpose This is covered here: "I am not receiving emails from my KACE K1000 appliance"

Test incoming mail to K1000 SMTP Server

For a complete test, make sure that you run this test from your mail serverRemember, the K1000 appliance does not have a POP server. You route the mail to the K1000s SMTP server and it does the rest. So, you can try to telnet to the K1000s SMTP server and send a test mail. Make sure when you do this test that the address used (e.g.admin@mycompany.com) is a valid user that can submit tickets to the helpdesk queue you are testing

E..g

>telnet kbox.mycompany.com 25
>EHLO mycompany.com
>MAIL FROM:<admin@mycompany.com>

>RCPT TO:<helpdesk@kbox.mycompany.com>
>DATA
To: <helpdesk@kbox.mycompany.com>
From: <admin@mycompany.com>
Subject: <Test>
Test
.

Every step should work.

Note that on some K1000 configurations there must be a user with the email address of admin@mycompany.com that is allowed to be a submitter of tickets.

Reading logs for information

When you download the K1000 log:

• the mail server (Exim) logs are in kbox_logs.tgz\tmp\exim* (exim_mainlog_MBx75l and exim_paniclog_5d5pTo)
  • Look for interaction similar to the SMTP tests above.
  • Make sure that hostnames, etc are resolvable.
• Debug_info_ST6ima log might show the exim process running away
• Other logs that give messages: Kbox_logs.tgz\kbox\kboxwww\logs\khelpdeskmailhandler_error
  Kbox_logs.tgz\kbox\kboxwww\logs\khelpdeskmailhandler_output
  Kbox_logs.tgz\kbox\kboxwww\logs\khelpdeskmailnotifier_error
  Kbox_logs.tgz\kbox\kboxwww\logs\khelpdeskmailnotifier_output

Use SMTP services logs from Microsoft:

• Enable logging on the SMTP Virtual Server.
• Files usually in c:\windows\system32\LogFiles\*SMTP*

Errors

I get a “550 unknown user” message:

• Make sure that you spelled the name of the address correctly and it matches the address in one of the helpdesk queues.
• Try to turn off your external SMTP server and remove the address of it from the network settings. Then reboot. Then change it back. Reboot again. That should clear up many issues.

I get a “451 error – unable to verify sender”

• Check your DNS settings.