By willsrobert

Problem

We needed to get users to log calls via emails to our KACE K1000 Appliance. The KACE uses its own internal SMTP server and sets its own email address as username@kacename.dnsname. As the appliance is within our LAN and our SMTP relay is outside, where we have no control, we could not simply add the kbox domain as a subdomain. And for some reason, even though the appliance name can be resolved by DNS, GroupWise would not send email to it. There are plenty of tips on how to make this work on other email servers but none for GroupWise, but after much trial and error we finally got it to work. Hope this helps save someone else some time.

KACE was purchased to do all our imaging, patching, asset management, auditing, inventory management of our desktops and replace our aging helpdesk app. Yes I know most of that functionality is within ZEN but the powers decided this is the way they wanted to go. I do have a dig every time it isn't as straight forward as it was claimed in the marketing blurb.

Firstly and simply the GroupWise changes. Add a route.cfg file to the GWIA directory as suggested in this TID10014421, suggestion 3, remembering to have a hard return after the last line. Note our GroupWise is still on NetWare but I am sure the route file can be used on Linux as well.

Mine looks like this, names and ips changed.

; This file is to route emails to the K1000 from GroupWise
; it has it's own SMTP server that will receive emails.
kbox1k.yourdomain.com.au [192.168.200.240]

Once this is complete restart the GWIA.

Now create a GroupWise account with the name you want, we used ITREQUEST. Log into the account and set a rule to forward all emails to the account name you have or will setup on the KACE. The usual delete after forwarding, delete other emails not sent directly to this account, etc settings. I discovered if you use a different username say it@kbox1k.yourdomain.com.au the tickets are created using the email account it was forwarded from, not desirable. If you name the email account on the KACE the same as the GroupWise account (just the username portion) using my example above itrequest@kbox1k.yourdomain.com.au then the tickets are logged with the original senders name as the submitter, preferred option for follow ups and job closure.

KACE Configuration

Now onto the KACE, I have added pop3 but I am pretty sure it doesn't need that to work but have not had time to remove at this point, I will try and update this when I get the chance. Log into the KACE appliance with admin rights and click on the settings tab at the top.

Click on control panel tab then on the Network Settings field, click on edit mode and enter your details in there, SMTP server ip, pop3 server name, the DNS and appliance name should be correct from the info you entered on install.

When finished click on the save button.

Now click on the Service Desk tab, configuration tab, click on the queues field, then click on the queue you want to configure.

This is ours


When that opens as above, click on edit mode and change the email username to be the same as the email setup in GroupWise previously. Note the Alt. email address is the one that users will see emails coming from and you will also want that to be the same as the one they log calls to as previously noted. Here you also enter the pop3 credentials which I am pretty sure aren't needed. When all is as required click on save.

Now test by sending an email from your email account to the itrequest@yourdomain.com.au or whatever you named the email account, and tickets should be generated in the KACE. It should send you a response saying ticket created and you should be able to reply to update if you like.

Have fun, you can use this to update tickets you are working on also, which saves logging into the KACE, as you probably have email open!