> Another question, is it possible to make the clients respond more quickly to changes ie. if one user marks an e-mail as deleted or
> read it shows quite instantly in the other users client? The idea is that the users will take care of the oldest unread e-mail but I am
> afraid that it is very easy that two users handles the same e-mail.

It's quite possible, unless all the users also Cc:  or Bcc: the original mailbox so that others see that the message has been processed.  If this though is a help line I've not found that a user complains about too much help. ;-)

FWIW, the delete (expunge) IMAP4 function does not happen on the server until all users are disconnected.  You might want to go to POP3 here instead of IMAP4 so that mail is downloaded an processed and not available to other members of the team.

That said, I would use a mailing list as the mailing address.  All the members of the support group as members of the list so all get the mail.  All replies go both to the sender and the list so members of the list know that the message has been processed and more importantly, how it was processed.

I really like using PMail for this since it's "Glossary" function allows the use of pre-planned responses to common questions.  All users can copy a glossary.pm to their account so that they could be using pre-approved replies.  ;-)
 

> And another, is it possible to store sent items at the mail-server instead of locally on each users client application (in this case
> Outlook)? I want all the users to be able to see what is sent and all sent messages to be stored in the same location.

An always filter for incoming and outgoing mail that forwards a copy of the mail to a common account provides an archive of all mail transactions.  You can trigger this one on the specific address of the account so that everything addressed to the account is available in one place.

I am assigned to set up a local mail server that gets our e-mail from our mail host POP. The users will share local e-mail boxes and use IMAP so they can see the mails that is taken care of and the mails that is not i.e. they are going to pick mails and take apropriate actions. Right now this small company's bosses goes through the emails and forward them to employees in order to get something done... Idiotic and time consuming.

 The process would be: Mercury gets e-mails from mail host via POP. The e-mails are delivered to local users via IMAP. Users would then send replies via mercury to the mail host SMTP. Does this sound sane? Problem though...I have no idea how to set it up and the manual goes a bit over my head.

I am testing on my local pc with Win XP. When I (if) get it to work it will be set up on a win 2003 server.

We have a DSL connection to the outside world and our network is behind a firewall. Static IP though. We do have users connecting through VPNs to the local network as well. We do not have Novel NetWare.

Mercury is installed with: MercuryS, MercuryC, MercuryP, MercuryD, MercuryX, MercuryH, MercuryI.

Anyone that can point me in the right direction?  

[quote user="rosquist"]

 The process would be: Mercury gets e-mails from mail host via POP.[/quote]via MercuryD, put in thePOP server details as per you regular mail client.[quote] The e-mails are delivered to local users via IMAP.[/quote] Actually the mail stays on the server and the IMAP client views it there.[quote] Users would then send replies via mercury to the mail host SMTP. Does this sound sane?[/quote]yes [quote]Problem though...I have no idea how to set it up and the manual goes a bit over my head.

I am testing on my local pc with Win XP. When I (if) get it to work it will be set up on a win 2003 server.[/quote]When you have it working on your machine if you just copy the entire directory to the same location on the server (e.g c:\Mercury) there is not need to set up & configure again.[quote]

We have a DSL connection to the outside world and our network is behind a firewall. Static IP though. We do have users connecting through VPNs to the local network as well.[/quote]Great, you can restrict access to the local network and don't need to forward any ports in your router.[quote] We do not have Novel NetWare.

Mercury is installed with: MercuryS, MercuryC, MercuryP, MercuryD, MercuryX, MercuryH, MercuryI.

Anyone that can point me in the right direction?  

[/quote]probably don't need X or H.

You should set up a separate user account for each user and one for the shared address (presumably sales@you or support@you).

Each user would set up 2 accounts in their mail client, thier regular user (could be POP or IMAP) and the shared IMAP account (everyone will need the same user/pass).

Try it out with all the different clients that will be used, to get a feel for how each implements the IMAP functionallity.

You can have multiple clients running on your machine connecting simultaneously to the server on your machine for testing.

Try your best to break it and do stupid things, your users will, and you should be prepared [:P]

Come back with any questions [:)] 

[quote user="rosquist"]

the manual goes a bit over my head.

[/quote]

I learnt almost everything I know about e-mail protocols and setting up systems from the help files (and configuration options) of Pegasus and Mercury. They are honestly the best resources you can find. Please invest time in the help files and don't run before you can walk. Also, as Dilbert rightly says, make sure you do plenty of testing.

The basic idea sounds fine and should really be a piece of cake to set up. However, are you sure that the mail store at your ISP can't just be accessed via IMAP? That could make your life much easier.

> I am assigned to set up a local mail server that gets our e-mail from our mail host POP. The users will share local e-mail boxes and
> use IMAP so they can see the mails that is taken care of and the mails that is not i.e. they are going to pick mails and take
> apropriate actions. Right now this small company's bosses goes through the emails and forward them to employees in order to get
> something done... Idiotic and time consuming.
>
>  The process would be: Mercury gets e-mails from mail host via POP. The e-mails are delivered to local users via IMAP. Users would then
> send replies via mercury to the mail host SMTP. Does this sound sane? Problem though...I have no idea how to set it up and the
> manual goes a bit over my head.

Here's the basic setup using Pegasus Mail and Mercury/32. I f you want to use other POP3/IMAP4 mail clients this works as well but I would still install Pegasus Mail at least for the admin user.

1.  Install WinPmail in the multiuser mode on the "server".  Use c:\pmail
    for the program; c:\pmail\mail for the mail directories.

2.  Run PCONFIG.exe from the WinPMail program directory and change the HOME and
    NEW mail directory specification to the \\server\vol\pmail\mail\~8
    format.  This takes the drive letter mapping out of the equation.

3.  Go to the remote workstations and install a shortcut to the common Pegasus Mail
    program.

Ok, now you have the basic mail system setup.  You can send mail to each other using Pegasus Mail.  

4.  Install Mercury/32 on this same server pointing to the Pegasus Mail
    directory structure.  Use MercuryD, MercuryS, MercuryC at least. Use
    \\server\vol\mercury\queue for the mail spool directory.

5.  Point MercuryD at all of your POP3 mailboxes to download the mail to
    your Pegasus Mail user directories.

You now can send and receive Internet mail via Pegasus Mail.  The mail is delivered to the Pegasus Mail directories automatically.  You send mail simply but putting the output files into the Mercury/32 mail spool directory.  This is accomplished automatically with a Pegasus Mail User Defined Gateway.  

6.  If you want to maintain other POP3/IMAP4 clients, point the client at
    your Mercury/32 host as a POP3 and SMTP host using the Pegasus
    Mail username and password to pickup the mail.

You can do a complete inbound and outbound mail archive with this setup using a simple Mercury/32 "Always" filter that put a copy in a users mail directory.

Sharkfin:
The mail host can be accessed via IMAP, however, when we have tried it it seems to be awfully slow. Our host is in another country and the bandwidth is not the best. Another issue is that we need to keep our mails for quite a long time, at least a couple of years and a mail archive on our in-house server is to prefer I think. Then we have control over back-ups etc. At the mail host we also have a limited space.

Okay, I've come this far. I installed Pegasus and Mercury and set it up like:
Internet name for this system: [192.168.2.23] (lokal IP to test machine where P&M is installed)
Local mailbox: C:\PMAIL\MAIL\~N
Primary queue: \\PCNAME\MERCURY\QUEUE (MERCURY is shared)
Local domains: Localhost=gsmail, Internet mail: [192:168:2:23] 
Local users: Admin  and Bob
Alias: bob@ourdomain.com Real address: Bob
MercuryD config:
Work dir: C:\MERCURY\Scratch\MercuryD
POP3 account: mail.ourdomain.com (this is the adress for our mail host pop and smtp)
username: bob@ourdomain.com
Local user: bob
Default user: bob

Now if I send a mail from Pegasus to Bob I am able to view it in Outlook (this is the the mail client used by our users today) where I set up an IMAP account with incoming and outgoing mailserver pointed to 192.168.2.23 and username bob.

If I send a mail from an external account to bob@ourdomain.com the Mercury Distributing POP3 Client says"  - 1 message successfully retrieved." and the mail box on the mail host is empty after that.

But I have no idea where this e-mail goes? I just cant find it. Please help.

Delivery of messages retrieved by MercuryD is controlled by the vales in Local user and Default user in the account configuration for MercuryD. From Mercury help:

Local user  If you enter the name of a local user on your system (one to which Mercury can deliver directly) then all the mail downloaded from the remote account will be sent to that local user, irrespective of the address fields in the message. If you leave this field blank, MercuryD will examine the To, CC and BCC fields of each message looking for addresses it recognizes as local. When it finds a local address, it will send a copy of the message to that local user. This facility allows you to have a single mailbox (called a Domain Mailbox by most Internet Service Providers) into which all mail for any users at a specified domain is placed; MercuryD can then retrieve the mail from that mailbox and route it to the appropriate local users for you.

Default user  When distributing mail from a domain mailbox, MercuryD may encounter messages for whom it can find no local recipient; this will commonly happen if one of your users subscribes to a mailing list, since mailing lists usually do not indicate the actual recipient anywhere in the message headers. In cases such as this, MercuryD can be told to deliver the message to a specific, or default user. If you leave this field blank, MercuryD will discard any messages for which it can find no local delivery addresses. This field is only meaningful when you have told MercuryD to distribute mail (by leaving the Local user field blank).

So in this case, with Local user: bob, all incoming messages should be moved to the mailbox for bob. Make sure the configuration is correct, restart Mercury and test again.

/Rolf

> Local domains: Localhost=gsmail, Internet mail: [192:168:2:23]

Could you show us the {Domains] section of your Mercury.ini?  This section is critical and if incorrect will cause major problems.  It should look something like;

[Domains]
;server ; domain name
server : server
server : gsmail.com
server : [192.168.1.23]

There is one server name unless you are using domain mailboxes or daemons.

By changing to UNC path's to C:\PMAIL\MAIL\~N the mail is delivered to Bobs folder... (I have to check up the correct use of \\server\vol\dir...)

Thanks for all the help so far. I am sure I will need more help in the future so I'll be back but for now
Have a really nice weekend everyone. 

> Well it seems to work but I am pretty sure this is very wrong and I need to have it correct. The gsmail.com is what I was
> thinking of using locally i.e only in our LAN.  
>
>  From mercury.ini:
> [Domains]
> LocalHost=gsmail: [192.168.2.23]
>
>
> [192  :  [192
> [192  :  [192.168.2.23]

This works but it's not clean and you will not get mail for bob@gsmail.com.  You domain at you ISP should go here if you have a 'domain' mailbox.

If you have a domain mailbox at your ISP you leave the username blank in MercuryD and set the default user to the user you select as the postmaster.  In this case you MUST have the domain of the domain mailbox in here.

It would help a lot if you provided read data for the ISP, domain names and e-mail addresses.

>  
> For the places you write server I guess it should be the computer/servers name on the LAN, right?


You can use most anything here for the server name unless you are using Netware.  I would use the server name if it's short otherwise just user server.

A quote from the Mercury help files (which, as I've said, are superbly written and very useful):

Domains recognized as local by this server This is probably the single most critical area of configuration in the Mercury system -- if you get this section wrong, you will inevitably get mail loops and other problems. In this section, you must tell Mercury all the Internet names it should regard as "local" -- that is, for which it should attempt direct delivery on the local system rather than forwarding the mail to another machine [my emphasis] for processing.

I've seen so many people here recently who simply haven't grasped how important configuring this correctly is. Basically, if you intend to receive mail addressed to bob@abcxyz.com, you MUST enter abcxyz.com in this section. Otherwise, how does Mercury know which domains its users belong to?

Yes, I think I understand. It just takes a while to get familiar with the way it works. I changed it to

[Domains]
server: server
server: localgs.com
server: [192.168.2.23] 

Another question, is it possible to make the clients respond more quickly to changes ie. if one user marks an e-mail as deleted or read it shows quite instantly in the other users client? The idea is that the users will take care of the oldest unread e-mail but I am afraid that it is very easy that two users handles the same e-mail.

And another, is it possible to store sent items at the mail-server instead of locally on each users client application (in this case Outlook)? I want all the users to be able to see what is sent and all sent messages to be stored in the same location.

Sharkfin: I am trying to read as much as I can of the documentation but time is not something that I have loads of. I appreciate all the help and will try not to ask to much. 

[quote user="rosquist"]

Another question, is it possible to make the clients respond more quickly to changes ie. if one user marks an e-mail as deleted or read it shows quite instantly in the other users client? The idea is that the users will take care of the oldest unread e-mail but I am afraid that it is very easy that two users handles the same e-mail.[/quote]That will be a client setting for when / how often the mailbox is checked.[quote]

And another, is it possible to store sent items at the mail-server instead of locally on each users client application (in this case Outlook)? I want all the users to be able to see what is sent and all sent messages to be stored in the same location.[/quote]Last time I used Outlook, this was not configurable, it always used the local folder. You could switch to another client that can, or alternatively, set a filter rule in Mercury to put copies of the replies into the mailbox (note that it is not possible to put them into a subfolder with the current filter ruleset)

Edit: you may be able to set a rule in each Outlook client to copy the sent items to the IMAP folder.