Setting Up Domino As A Catch All Email Server

:: I was recently asked to setup a domino server so it would catch all email sent to the domain if there was no recipient found for the message. This is known as a Catch-All server. Here’s how I did it…

First of all you must configure the Domino server to hold all NDR messages. In R5 and R6 this is done in the configuration document for the inbound SMTP server :

1) Open the Domino Administrator
2) Connect to the server
3) Click on the “Configuration” tab
4) From the left panel, expand the “Messaging” twistie and click on the “Configurations”
5) Open the record for your mail domain and click on the “Router/SMTP” tab
6) From the sub-tab, click on “Advanced”
7) From the third row of tabs, click on “Controls”
8) Ensure that the field named “Hold undeliverable mail” is set to “Enabled”

Once this is enabled all messages received by the server that can’t be delivered for anybody will be held in MAIL.BOX. It should be noted that the sender will NOT get a message back to say the email failed.

You then need to create a small agent in MAIL.BOX that will run on a schedule. I find that running the agent every 30 minutes or so is the best.

The agent should be set to run on all documents in the database and you should specify a search criteria of :

“field RoutingState contains HOLD AND “field FailureReason contains public”

The agent itself consists of the following code :

SELECT RoutingState = “HOLD”;
FIELD RoutingState := “”;
FIELD Recipients := “your email @ Your Domain . Com;
FIELD SaveOptions:=@Unavailable;
FIELD Form := @If(@IsAvailable(MailSavedForm) & MailSavedForm!=””;MailSavedForm;”Memo”);
FIELD $Hops:=25;

The agent will basically get all messages that are held by the router and contain the error message ‘User not found in PUBLIC address book’ and will change the recipient to your email address and set the message state so the router can send it on to you.

I’m sure this could be improved upon a lot but it’s a great starting point.

:: I’m working on an Articles section for the blog. I’ll move this into it when I complete it. I also have a few articles that I wrote for TechRepublic a long time ago that I’ll publish there also.