IBM App Connect Enterprise software has always had the ability to connect to email servers for sending and receiving emails using the “EmailInput” and “EmailOutput” nodes. IBM App Connect on IBM Cloud (Enterprise plans) now has the ability to support these nodes, giving you complete flexibility in how you choose to deploy App Connect Enterprise integrations that interact with email servers.
In this blog post, we are going to show a sample configuration that you can perform to deploy Email Integrations.
Configuring the flow
To deploy “EmailInput” and “EmailOutput” nodes to App Connect, you must ensure that the email server is configured on the nodes. Configure your “Email Server” with the appropriate value. We highly recommend using the SSL protocol where available, and we support the following protocols:
- smtp://hostname:port
- pop3s://hostname:port
- imaps://hostname:post
The following image shows an example of the node configured to connect to Gmail.
Configuring security credentials is done in two stages. The first is to specify a Security Identity value on the message flow. This takes the form of a text string; for example:
Configuring the Integration in App Connect
After you complete the steps above, your flow can be deployed. Before starting your Integration, you’ll need to complete the second part of configuring security, which involves attaching a policy that provides the security credentials on how to connect to the email server. The protocol of the email server you are connecting to will dictate which policy you create and attach. We support the following policies:
An example of a POP3 policy is shown in the following image.
Once you’ve attached your policy to your Integration, you can then start it and run it as a normal flow on ACE.
For further information, see the Knowledge Center documentation on how to configure EmailInput and EmailOutput.