Sharepoint 2010 Configuring Outgoing Email in a Testlab

During the configuration of my Sharepoint 2010 testlab, I wanted to configure the outgoing email for Sharepoint 2010. Since this is a testlab, I didnt want to use a full featured Exchange environment. With an alternative smtp solution and some tweaks in Sharepoint, it is still a relatively easy setup.
For the SMTP solution I use Papercut. This is a very light SMTP server, just for receiving emails. This is a perfect lightweight solution since I don't want to send emails to Sharepoint.
 

Download Papercut from this location : http://papercut.codeplex.com/

Setup Papercut

- Unzip the Papercut package on your server
- Start Papercut and mount the SMTP service to a network adapter
- Leave the port at the default setting (port 25)



- Add the Papercut.exe to the startup folder


Configure outgoing e-mail for a farm
To configure outgoing e-mail for a farm by using Central Administration
- In Central Administration, click System Settings.
- On the System Settings page, in the E-Mail and Text Messages (SMS) section, click Configure outgoing e-mail settings.
- On the Outgoing E-Mail Settings page, in the Mail Settings section, type the SMTP server name for outgoing e-mail (for example, mail.example.com) in the Outbound SMTP server box.
- In the From address box, type the e-mail address as you want it to be displayed to e-mail recipients.
- In the Reply-to address box, type the e-mail address to which you want e-mail recipients to reply.
- In the Character set list, select the character set that is appropriate for your language.
Click OK.

Test the mail configuration
- Open your Sharepoint page. In my case I opened the Team site and went to Announcements
- Now create an Alert for the Announcements 

 

 


Make sure you select Send notification immediately

Now open check your Papercut window.. and if all goes well you will see a message like this:



Now add some announcements in your Sharepoint page.. and wait for the messages in Papercut.