As a means of alerting you to issues with servers and other monitored devices – email works fine if you are interested in responding to the item and then not needing to record the message for future reference. However if you want to retain a record of emails received to a pop mailbox then read on.
Initially I wanted something that would integrate with a Helpdesk System written in Lotus Notes / Domino but I decided to get something that would log to another database MS SQL or Mysql with the capacity to extend to other databases.
Enter Email2DB from Parker Software – which you can get at www.email2db.com. Its not free but it is worth every penny if you need this functionality quickly and the ability to do an awful lot more.
In operation you need to add the details of the pop mail account you want to process mail from and the actions that you want to act on the emails. Finally you decide if you want to remove the email from the remote pop account once you have processed it. The application can store the emails you process in either Mysql or MS Sql databases and the actions that you can do (dependant on the version you buy) such as forwarding the original mail, running scripts to further manipulate the message contents or simply having a pop message appear.
In a future article I’ll cover using Email2DB to link with a Lotus Notes Database using NOTESSQL and a script.
Many thanks to Dan at Parker Software for his persistence with odbc issues during the Lotus integration work.