azurecurve

When demoing Microsoft Dynamics GP it is often necessary to demonstrate a few functions which integrate with email. With the email document functionality introduced in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2010 R2, being able to have the email appear in an Outlook client without a mail server connected was sufficient because you could still open the email and show the attachment.

However, with the introduction of Workflow 2.0 in Microsoft Dynamics GP 2013 R2 it is actually necessary for Workflow 2.0 to be able to connect to an SMTP server to send an email and also for the logged in user to receive the email.

We typically do the demo using a virtual machine with everything required installed; because of Workflow 2.0 this now also includes a mail server. The VM already has SQL Server, Dynamics GP, Web Services, Web Client, Management Reporter and other services and applications installed so I don’t want to use something like Microsoft Exchange which is far larger and resource heavy than is needed.

Instead I have started using hMailServer which is a small and lightweight mail server with both POP3 and SMTP.

This is short series of posts where I’ll cover the installation, configuration and connection of an Outlook client, but please bear in mind this is for a self-contained test system and not a production one.