Pickup Folder For Emails, Similar to MS IIS SMTP

Many organizations have been using the MS IIS SMTP Server for transferring emails from their local LAN to another SMTP server or to their final destination. Besides accepting emails via the SMTP protocol, the IIS SMTP server had a feature called "The pickup folder" that allowed other applications to simply place a .eml file in C:\inetpub\mailroot\Pickup, and the SMTP service automatically picks them up, processes them (moving them to Drop for local delivery or Queue if external), and sends them out, acting as a local mail relay for applications.

However, Microsoft no longer supports this server on the newer version of their operating system.

Xeams - An Excellent Alternative

Xeams is an excellent alternative to MS IIS SMTP, providing most of the features administrators are familiar with, along with several features that were never available in MS IIS SMTP. In this page, let's discuss one such feature called the Input Message Queue, which is functionally similar to the Pickup folder in IIS.

What is the Input Message Queue

Input Message Queue is a special folder in Xeams used to send outbound emails. By default, the location of this folder is $INSTALL_DIR\InputMessageQueue, where $INSTALL_DIR refers to the installation folder. Xeams will look for .eml files in this folder and process them as if they were received via SMTP.

Triggering emails

There are two ways to trigger sending emails found in the InputMessageQueue folder:

  1. On Demand - This is the default behavior, which requires someone to invoke a special operation in the web interface. Log in to the Xeams web interface as the administrator and click Home. This will change your browser's URL to ...operation=60. Manually change this value to ...operation=267 and hit enter. The following screen will display the status of the messages being processed.
  2. Automatic - This is not the default, but can be enabled by specifying auto.start.input.queue=true it in the server.properties file.

Changing the location of the InputMessageQueue folder

To change the location of the InputMessageQueue folder, specify the absolute path in the server.properties file, as shown below.

input.queue.folder=C:/inetpub/mailroot/Pickup

The line above sets the path expected by MS IIS SMTP. Notice the slashes: they are forward slashes rather than the backslash normally used on Windows.