Update:  Be sure to check out this article on how to use GreenTools for Google Apps (G4G) to specify G4GSMAIL as an option as well as separate routers!

I was recently contacted by a customer asking if MAILTOOL could use more than one mail router.  We recently did update MAILTOOL to handle multiple routers in the case of failure of one, but in this case the reason was that they were moving from a locally hosted Microsoft Exchange server to a Cloud Hosted Server, in this case Office 365.

Because MAILTOOL not only has the ability to set it's values at a command level but also at a system and/or user level using configuration files, this is fairly simple to accomplish.

1.  Create a default configuration file in /bvstools/mailtool/config/defaults.json.  This will contain the settings for the Microsoft Exchange server:

{
	"variables": [
	{
		"name":"send_with_server_type",
		"default":"*MAILTOOL"
	},
	{
		"name":"mail_router",
		"default":"<exchange.router.host.or.ip>"
	},
	{
		"name":"use_mail_router",
		"default":"*ONLY"
	},
  ]
}

Replace <exchange.router.host.or.ip> with your mail router information.  

This setup is used in the case where your Microsoft Exchange server does not require any type of authentication.  If it does, please feel free to contact me for more options.

2.  For each user you switch over to Office 365, set up a configuration file for that user id in /bvstools/mailtool/config/<USERID>/defaults.json where <USERID> is the specific user id.

That file would look like this:

{
	"variables": [
    {
		"name":"from_email",
		"default":"<from email address>"
	},
	{
		"name":"from_name",
		"default":"<user name>"
	},
	{
		"name":"send_with_server_type",
		"default":"*MAILTOOL"
	},
	{
		"name":"mail_router",
		"default":"smtp.office365.com"
	},
	{
		"name":"use_mail_router",
		"default":"*ONLY"
	},
	{
		"name":"perform_mx_lookup",
		"default":"*NO"
	},
	{
		"name":"use_ssl",
		"default":"*TLS"
	},
	{
		"name":"smtp_port",
		"default":"587"
	},
	{
		"name":"smtp_auth_user",
		"default":"<from email address>
	},
	{
		"name":"smtp_auth_password",
		"default":"<account password>"
	}	
  ]
}

Again, anything in < > replace with the appropriate data.

Because Office 365 requires authentication you will need a configuration file for each user since each account will have different authentication data.

There is another option for using Office 365 that uses OAuth 2.0.  With this method you don't have to store the password for the user, but there is a small setup for each user account.  And it also requires licensing of addition software.

3.  Turn off Strict SSL for MAILTOOL. 

Turning off Strict SSL for MAILTOOL is done by copying and pasting the following command:

CHGDTAARA DTAARA(MAILTOOL/MLTSSL01DA *ALL) VALUE(*NO)

We could instead import the proper Certificate Authorities (CAs), but lately MS has been pretty flaky with their SSL certificates.  Feel free to contact me for information on how to import the CAs.

4.  Set up the MAILTOOL command to use the configuration files by default. 

This is done by copying and pasting the following command:

CHGCMDDFT CMD(MAILTOOL) NEWDFT('CONFIG(*DFT)') 

What this does is set the default for Configuration File on the MAILTOOL command so that it will use the default (*DFT).  The default is first looking for /bvstools/mailtool/config/<USERID>/defaults.json and if that's not found it will use /bvstools/mailtool/config/defaults.json.

If you are also using SPLTOOL and the SPL2EMAIL or SPL2EMAILB command you will want to change the defaults for the Configuration File parameter on them as well.

Remember that any field in the configuration file will automatically override those on the command, so the parameters mentioned here aren't the only ones you need to use, but they are the minimum that you will want to use.