IMAP
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[edit] Introduction
Alfresco Community 3.2 introduces support for accessing the Alfresco server via the IMAP protocol. The protocol allows email applications that support IMAP (including Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, etc.) to connect to and interact with Alfresco repositories directly from the mail application.
[edit] Alfresco IMAP Mount Points
IMAP mount points are used to control which folders are available via IMAP and the mode in which they are accessed. Modes are used to define the type of interaction available.
[edit] Mount Point Modes
The IMAP integration offers the following three different access Modes.
- ARCHIVE - Allows emails to be written to and read from Alfresco by the IMAP client by dragging/dropping, copy/pasting etc from the email client.
- VIRTUAL - Documents managed by Alfresco may be viewed as 'emails' from the IMAP client. Documents are shown as virtual emails with the ability to view metadata and trigger actions on the document using links included in the email body.
- MIXED - A combination of both archive & virtual modes i.e. both document access and email management are available.
[edit] Default Mount Point
By default, a single mount point called IMAP Home is defined for /Company Home running in Mixed mode.
[edit] Enabling the IMAP Protocol
The IMAP protocol server is disabled by default. To enable the protocol, locate and uncomment the following sample configuration entries in alfresco-global.properties:
imap.server.enabled=true imap.server.port=143 imap.server.host=localhost
Important: You should not use localhost as the imap.server.host - update this value with the IP address (or corresponding DNS address) of your external IP interface. A value of 0.0.0.0 in Unix will make it listen on the specified port on all IP interfaces.
Note: You will need to restart your Alfresco server for the new configuration to take effect.
[edit] The Virtual View Email Format
The virtualized view uses Presentation Templates to generate the mail body and display document metadata, action links (for download, view, webdav, folder) and Start Workflow form (HTML view only). The templates are stored in the repository in /Company Home/Data Dictionary/Imap Configs/Templates There are separate templates provided to generate either a HTML or Plan Text body based on the the format request by the email client. The templates can be customized to change the metadata and actions available in the email body, see Template Guide for details on working with templates.
[edit] Marking Sites as IMAP Favorites
In order to have access to Alfresco Share sites via IMAP , the site(s) need to be added to your list of sites using Share IMAP Favorites.
To add your site(s) to your list of sites available via IMAP, click the 'IMAP Favorites' icon in the Share - My Sites dashlet on your Share - My Dashboard page as illustrated in the screenshot below:
Refresh your IMAP view to see the new Site as illustrated below:
