If you’re running a Windows home server, you can set up email notifications to let your users know when new emails arrive in their inboxes. This can be a helpful way to keep your users informed about important updates and messages, and it can also help to ensure that they have access to the latest and greatest information when they’re on your server. To set up email notifications for your Windows home server, you first need to create an email notification account. Once you’ve created an account, you’ll need to create a new notification policy. The policy will tell your users how they should be notified about new emails. You can either send all emails through the email notification system on your server, or you can send specific types of emails (such as newsletters) through the email notification system only. Next, you’ll need to add the necessary code into your existing web application so that the email notifications are sent through the web application’s message routing system. This code will take care of sending new emails directly to users’ inboxes instead of going through the email notification system on your server. Once everything is set up correctly, you’ll be able to send out new emails through the web application’s message routing system without having to worry about any extra code or configuration.
Since our home servers are constantly on, and often headless, it is nice to know when certain events happen on your server without having to log in and check all the time. This is where email notifications save the day.
To set up E-Mail notifications in Windows Home Server, the first thing you going to want to do is fire up the Dashboard.
Once the Dashboard has opened, click on the notifications button
That will open the Alert Viewer where you can click on the Set up email notification for alerts link
Now click on the enable button which will bring up a screen where you can enter details for your SMTP Server. You can use any SMTP Server but I have opted to set up a dedicated E-Mail account for my home server on my personal domain, which utilizes Google Apps, so I will be using the standard GMail SMTP Server. When you are done click on the Ok button.
Type in a list of people you want to be able to receive the alerts sent by Windows Home Server and click on the Apply and send email button.
After a short period you should see a confirmation that the test E-Mail was sent successfully.
If I go and check my mail I will see a test email in my inbox that confirms future notifications will be sent to me.
Microsoft has a list of popular SMTP Servers, as well as a list of which events result in a notification which can be found over here.
