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We're trying to use the Microsoft-supplied Help Desk template for our SharePoint help desk site (running on WSS 3.0) and are having problems trying to create tickets from emails. When working correctly, the site should accept an email and then create a list item (service ticket) from that email. To set this up in SharePoint, we can specify an email address such as [email protected] (we can't change the ourdomain.com part).

The problem is: when someone sends an email to this address, our Exchange server realizes that it isn't a valid Exchange account, so it sends it to our Barracuda box. The Barracuda box sends it to SharePoint, but it appends "btv1==2372983023..." to the beginning of the address (which I understand is used to prevent backscatter). SharePoint receives this email and sees that there is no such user (because SharePoint checks the user's email address against Active Directory).

If we could get the email to SharePoint without the "btv1..." part, it would work fine. Can someone tell me how we should route from Exchange to SharePoint directly, so that the Barracuda box doesn't get in the way? After reading a suggested solution online, we tried creating an SMTP connector in Exchange, pointing @sharepoint.ourdomain.com emails to the IP of our SharePoint server. We then assigned this new connector a higher cost value than the "out to the Internet" SMTP connector. That didn't work though. Any ideas?

Thanks.

2 Answers 2

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Create a contact. Set the email address to SMTP:[email protected]

I know it sounds weird, but this is just how it works.

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  • If you have sharepoint setup with the appropriate permissions these contacts should be created automatically when you "mail enable" the object.
    – pablo
    Feb 12, 2011 at 18:55
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The SMTP connector is the correct method to do this. One common hang up here is that after you add the smtp connector restart the SMTP service on the exchange server. This will not take exchange down, just cycle the smtp service. When the service is cycled it will detect the new path.

Alternatively I believe every few hours it will refresh in normal circumstances.

If that doesn't fix it it must be the settings on your smtp connector.

A few other things to check:

Can you telnet to port 25 from the exchange server to the sharepoint server? If the answer is no then there is an issue with the smtp services on your sharepoint server itself. You will also notice in I believe the queues window that the connector will appear to be down.

Winroute will help you trace your information for email delivery through connectors.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?familyid=c5a8afbf-a4da-45e0-adea-6d44eb6c257b&displaylang=en

Use WinRoute to determine the link state routing information as known to the routing master. The WinRoute tool connects to the link state port, TCP port 691, on Exchange 2000 or 2003 server and extracts the link state information for an organization. The information is a series of GUIDs that WinRoute matches to objects in Active Directory, connectors and bridgehead servers, and presents in human-readable format. This tool should be the first step in troubleshooting routing in an Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2003 mail-handling environment.

Another good thing to check is message tracking, and the smtp logs of the exchange server, it may give you some additional information and you can enable this in the virtual smtp server settings in exchange. Make sure to enable all options for logging.

Also while cost is important on SMTP connectors check the following:

Make sure the bridgehead is correct as the source exchange server. Under address space tab you should have 1 listing dns.name.of.sharepoint.corp cost of 1 Make sure connector scope is entire organization and allow messages to be relayed

It is ok to have the cost of 1 on the sharepoint and a cost of 1 on the * outbound connector.

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