Notes about SMTP config options in Polaris 7.4 System Administration

These issues may be in later versions as well, but in Polaris 7.4, I can confirm:

  • The SMTP port config option in Sys Admin is ignored, it always uses port 25
  • The username/password/TLS options for authentication are also ignored. Though some may be honored, but not in the combo we needed them to be.
  • The SDI Daily job, which sends saved search emails, will FAIL if the SMTP server offers the option to do SMTP AUTH - it will hang the connection and then timeout. You should set your SMTP server to NOT to present an AUTH prompt.

This came about during our hardware migration to server 2022 which no longer supports IIS SMTP relaying. Also, I should note that our preferred alternative SMTP relay service, hmailServer, is no longer being actively developed either.

We ended up using the free version of https://www.mailenable.com/ as our tool to relay the plain unauthenticated SMTP output from Polaris e-receipt, EDI, SDI, PIN reset email processes through our email delivery service provider: https://postmarkapp.com/

Make sure to test your preferred alternative solution if you currently use the deprecated IIS SMTP service.