Virto Incoming E-mail Feature — new simple and effective service for Microsoft SharePoint 2007 for routing and collecting incoming e-mails from POP3 & IMAP Servers.

Default SharePoint Incoming E-mail Service

Microsoft SharePoint enables incoming email routing. SharePoint default Incoming e-mail service collects messages from specified email addresses and put the information from the messages into a predefined SharePoint list . The service is often used for organizing some help desk or customer support services, where processing incoming mail usually serves as the first step in the workflow scheme .

This feature is organized with Incoming Email Service and can be found in “Operations” tab in SharePoint “Central Administration” block. If Incoming e-mail service is working, SharePoint runs background job - Windows SharePoint Services Incoming E-Mail - according to timer settings. This job is controlled by Windows SharePoint Services Timer like other planned jobs. At the same time e-mail messages are collected from only one SMTP-domain. After e-mail routing is adjusted on the farm level, site administrators can allow sending e-mail to certain lists in the library. Not all the types of lists are supported for this procedure. The list of available ones is in “Incoming email settings” block in “Communications” section. Available settings depend on type of the list – for example, document library asks what you are going to do with an attachment, and blog list enables to define if contained element should be instantly published. When email is processed, four parameters are saved by default - EmailTo, EmailCc, EmailFrom, EmailSubject.

However, the default SharePoint service has some shortcomings that restrict its usefulness, and applicability. First, it allows collecting email messages from SMTP servers only. Second, it does not allow for collecting emails from more than one mail server or domain . Third, the service supports only default SharePoint list types and cannot put email information to a list of a custom type. Finally, the deployment and setting up procedures are not that quick and simple.

Virto Incoming E-mail Feature for SharePoint

Virtosoftware offers an alternative solution that on the one hand is much simpler in deployment and usage and on the other hand provides SharePoint users with additional features. In addition to all the features available when using the default SharePoint email service Virto Incoming Email Service allows for collecting mail from POP3 & IMAP servers, collecting mail from multiple email servers and domains and enables gathering information from emails in SharePoint lists of any type including custom ones.