This article covers some common issues you may encounter when trying to set up or troubleshoot sending email through Asset Bank. This article is intended for customer who host Asset Bank on-premise (on their own servers). If you host Asset Bank in the cloud with us, our Customer Support team will be happy to help, please email us support@assetbank.co.uk

If you are trying to send an email using Asset Bank and it is not being received by the chosen recipient there are a few common things which can cause this.

Problem: Asset Bank reports that your email was sent but it is not received by the recipient.

The first place to check is the ApplicationSettings.properties file, usually located in [Tomcat Home]/webapps/asset-bank/WEB-INF/classes. This file has several settings which Asset Bank uses to connect to your SMTP server.

Here are the settings:

# The SMTP server for outgoing emails:
emailSMTP=[IP address/host name of your SMTP server]

# SMTP PORT (leave blank for default 25)
emailSMTPPort=

# SMTP authentication username (leave blank for no authentication)
emailSMTPUsername=[username]

# SMTP authentication password (optional)
emailSMTPPassword=[password]

If these settings are not correct for your SMTP server Asset Bank will not be able to connect to it. Asset Bank always reports that the mail has been sent, but if it cannot connect to the SMTP server then this information will be in the log files located in [Tomcat Home]/logs (usually in the 'stdout' or 'catalina.out' files)

If Asset Bank cannot connect to your SMTP server there should be a similar message to this in the log file:

FEEDBACK EMAIL ERROR : MESSAGING EXCEPTION : <javax.mail.SendFailedException: Sending failed;
nested exception is:
class javax.mail.MessagingException: Could not connect to SMTP host: localhost, port: 25;
nested exception is:
java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused: connect>javax.mail.SendFailedException: Sending failed;
nested exception is:
class javax.mail.MessagingException: Could not connect to SMTP host: localhost, port: 25;
nested exception is:
java.net.ConnectException: Connection refused: connect

This error means that either your settings in the ApplicationSettings.properties file are incorrect, or your SMTP server is not configured to 'talk' to (allow connections from) your Asset Bank.

Problem: Asset Bank reports that your email was sent. Mail appears not to be being delivered to the recipient, despite the Asset Bank log files and the SMTP server confirming it was sent.

The first possible cause of this behaviour is the default 'from' address configured within Asset Bank. The default from address when Asset Bank is installed is set to 'noreply@noreply.com'. Unless you change it this will be the from address for all outgoing mail originating from Asset Bank.

This can often cause problems because mail servers will often block noreply@noreply.com, regarding it as SPAM mail.

An easy cure for this is to change the from address to something else. You can do this in Asset Bank under Admin > Content > Email Templates > Change the from address for all your email templates. You can also check what the current default from address is by going into the [edit] link on any of the email templates.

NB: The from address can also be changed 'per-template' in each template, so if you want to know the current default from address it might be worth checking a few in case someone has set different from addresses for different templates.

Please be aware that if you change it to an address containing your actual email domain then your SMTP server may not send the mail as it does not originate from a known mail server for that domain. In this case you may have to configure your SMTP server to allow Asset Bank to send from an address within your domain. 

Another possible cause is if your SMTP server is not configured to send mail outside of your email domain. If this is happening then you will get an error similar to this in one of the log files (in the 'stdout' or 'catalina.out' files):

FEEDBACK EMAIL ERROR : MESSAGING EXCEPTION : <javax.mail.SendFailedException: Sending failed;
nested exception is:
class javax.mail.MessagingException: 530 5.7.1 Client was not authenticated
>javax.mail.SendFailedException: Sending failed;
nested exception is:
class javax.mail.MessagingException: 530 5.7.1 Client was not authenticated

If this message appears in your log file, the ‘5.7.1 Client not authenticated’ message indicates that your SMTP server is refusing to send email to a domain outside of your company’s email domain. You will need to configure your SMTP server to allow sending to addresses outside of your email domain.

If you have a customer support agreement with us, have checked the log files for possible causes to your email problem and still aren't sure of the cause please get in touch with a brief explanation of your problem and we will look into this for you.