I've just installed Meister 7.1 and am trying to setup email notifications. How can I test this? I have an SMTP server and port. Do I have to install something to actually "send" the message via SMTP?

Thanks
D Day

Nobody uses email notifications?

I've got all the stuff I need as far as information. What does Meister use to actually send the email? Anybody?

Meister handles email notifications through a Perl _script_ – omemail.pl – so you should be able to turn on the email by simply furnishing the correct parameters in your server setup.

To edit the email setup, in Meister click on the Window menu and select Preferences from the drop-down.

When the Preferences dialog box has opened, expand the OpenMake line and select Machine – this will take another couple of seconds to update.

The machine data will have several tabs displayed – the second one will be for the Email settings. Click on Email and provide the correct settings for your email server.

Depending on your email server, it may be necessary to provide the username and password for the sending email account. You may have to experiment with this to get it working.

It will take restarting your services to get Meister to update its configuration to use your new email settings.

Hope this helps,

Michael Andrews

Ok.. I have my email notification working.
Now I have a question about using system variables in the body of the message. I want to use $(USER_NAME), $(BUILD_DATE) and $(LOG_URL) in the message. It seems if there are any blanks ahead of them or other text around them it ignores them. They were on the first email but with no explanation, so I tried to add some and now they don't work. Any clues?

Thanks,
D Day

My email notification routinely handles spaces in front of the variable name and a period immediately following, so I don't see that as your problem. I also tested with the same variables you cite here, in several different usages, and they work consistently.

Your _xml_ workflow definition sounds suspect in this case. You should be able to determine if this is the problem by creating a brand new activity for the 'Send Email' type of the 'Notifications' plug-in. Starting from scratch will avoid any problems of _embed_ded/hidden code within your message text.

Then, if your newly-created notification activity displays the same problem, there is an underlying problem. However, if the newly-created activity works properly, the problem is in the _xml_ file that codes the workflow for Meister execution.

If a deeper analysis of the _xml_ that defines your workflow is required, then bear in mind that your message (activity) is actually processed by Perl using this _xml_ file. So let's take a look under the hood at the actual data being processed by the Perl _script_ omemail.pl.

To do this, find the _xml_ file for your workflow. If it is a public workflow, it will be under the path C:\Program Files\OpenMake\kbserver\tomcat\webapps\openmake.ear\openmake.war\kb\jobs\public for a Windows KB server. It will bear the same name as your workflow, so if your workflow is named "Notification of Build", then you will have a corresponding _xml_ en_title_d "Notification of Build._xml_"

For your email notification activity, you should find these variables spelled out in your message text twice.

Begin by finding the tag associated with your activity name. A quick search using your text editor should locate it.

Shortly after the Name tag, you should find 2 separate tags, Command (inside angle brackets) and CommandPatterns (inside angle brackets) - Commands will spell out the exact command-line submitted for execution. I suspect CommandPatterns has more to do with what is displayed on-screen for the Meister GUI.

But make sure the 2 match for your message text: compare the CommandPatterns line identified as 'Message' with the Command text that follows the -m in the command-line. At the same time, make certain there are no _embed_ded characters within either the command-line or the Message CommandPattern.

This is what the two lines look like from a typical email notification:

Command perl -S omemail.pl -s "This is a test" -r "A@B.com" -m "This is testing a public notification process from a single standalone OpenMake activity served by HD3 KB Server - ["yyyy-MM-dd_HH:mm: ss"]; $(LOG_URL); $(BUILD_DATE); $(USER_NAME)"

CommandPatterns 'Message'&&This is testing a public notification process from a single standalone OpenMake activity served by HD3 KB Server - ["yyyy-MM-dd_HH:mm: ss"]; $(LOG_URL); $(BUILD_DATE); $(USER_NAME)

Let me know if you have any further problems.

Michael Andrews

Michael,

That was exactly the problem, thanks. When I copied an existing workflow, the _xml_ picked up some odd characters. I created a new workflow from scratch and it worked great. I went back and "cleaned up" the copy and it is working correctly now.

Thanks again,
D Day