Mail Express and EFT Event Rules

The integration of Mail Express with EFT provides extended reporting, auditing, and automation capabilities. In EFT Server, you can define Event Rules to be triggered by Mail Express (ad hoc) events and audit/run reports on those events. Use EFT Server's File Uploaded (file uploaded to Mail Express) and File Downloaded (file downloaded from Mail Express) events to track Mail Express uploads and downloads. (There are no default Mail Express Event Rules.)

• When creating EFT Server Event Rules for Mail Express activity, please do so with caution. Using Event Rules to manipulate Mail Express files within the file store can render those files inaccessible to users who need to download them.

• All communication is initiated by Mail Express and unidirectional.

• Mail Express provides its path to EFT for Event Rules, auditing, and reporting; that is, the path is relative to Mail Express's file system. If you have not set up the share correctly or did not define the Event Rule within EFT appropriately, then the physical file that is transferred will not be accessible to EFT.

• When a user downloads a zipped file, the EFT File Downloaded Event is triggered only once by the .ZIP file. (The files can also be downloaded individually, in which case each download triggers the Event.)

• When a user uploads a file using Mail Express, the EFT File Uploaded Event is triggered for each file attached to the email. For example, if you attach five separate files to an email, the Event is triggered five times.

Suppose a manager wants to receive an email when a certain user uploads files using Mail Express. You could define a File Uploaded Event Rule, with the If Protocol Condition set to Ad Hoc and the If Logon Name Condition set to the user account (provided the user has an account in EFT), then add the Send email notification Action. The email notification could include details such as path, file name, and so on.

Instead of "If Logon Name," you could use any of the other more than 30 Conditions available for the File Uploaded event, such as user groups, IP address, or file name.

When a file is uploaded or downloaded using Mail Express, Mail Express sends information about the file transfer to EFT Server, which records it in the database. When a file is uploaded to the Mail Express Server, Mail Express uses a numbering scheme to obscure the file's physical path, for privacy and security reasons. Mail Express also creates a "Virtual" path to the file that contains the actual file name. The subject line and file name of the Virtual path are from the email processed by Mail Express. The text below is from an email sent via an EFT Send notification email Action for a File Upload event showing the Virtual Path, Physical Path, and File Name for a file sent via Mail Express:

Server Local Time: 17 Sep 12 13:30:00

Protocol: ad hoc

Virtual Path: /adhoc/certificate/SSLcertificate.crt

Physical Path: C:\Program Files\Globalscape\Mail Express\MailExpressAttachments\261\0000000000000001\0000000000000001

File Name: SSLcertificate.crt

(“File Name” and “Base File Name” are determined from the “Virtual Path” variable in EFT.)

Event Rule Time Limit

When EFT Server is unavailable, Mail Express will queue up the information that it has regarding uploads and downloads until the EFT Server connection is restored, at which time Mail Express will send EFT Server the missed information. To handle cases when Mail Express is unable to send information to EFT, you can configure a time limit during which EFT Server Event Rule notifications can occur. If the connection has been unavailable for longer than the Event Rule time limit, Event Rule notifications are not triggered, but the information is still sent to EFT.

For example, suppose the Event Rule time limit is set for 1 hour and you have defined an Event Rule to copy the file to another location when a file is uploaded to the Mail Express Server. The connection to EFT Server has been down for 2 hours, as shown in the picture below. When EFT Server becomes available, it would not trigger the Event Rule Copy Action, because the outage was longer than the 1-hour limit.

The upload is still recorded in the ARM database; that information is always captured by EFT Server, regardless of the Allow EFT Server Event Rules to Fire for Mail Express setting.

Some of the parameters sent from Mail Express to EFT for Event Rules and auditing/reporting include:

• Username, which is used to populate the EFT variable %USER.LOGIN%

• DisplayName, which is used to populate the EFT variable %USER.FULL_NAME%

• Email, which is used to populate the EFT variable %USER.EMAIL%

The table below describes how these variables can be different depending on the type of user.

For details of configuring the EFT Server connection in Mail Express, refer to EFT Configuration.

For details of creating EFT Server Event Rules and variables, refer to the EFT documentationEFT documentation.