Votiro Cloud for Email Operation Overview

Votiro Cloud for Email Operation Overview

Edge Transport Server and Transport Service

Microsoft Exchange Edge Transport servers handle all inbound and outbound Internet mail flow, by providing mail relay and smart host services for an organization. Transport agents running on the Edge Transport server provide additional layers of message protection and security.

The transport service, also referred to as a transport pipeline, is a collection of services, connections, components, queues and server roles that work together to route email messages to and from an organization in the MS Exchange server.

The transport service handles SMTP mail flow, performs message categorization and drives the VotiroVotiro Cloud for Email transport agent.

Integration as a Transport Agent

Votiro Cloud for Email is a transport agent created by Votiro to communicate with VotiroVotiro Cloud to provide positive selection processing for emails.

Transport agents have full access to emails they encounter on the network. Votiro Cloud for Email utilizes the SmtpReceiveAgent for processing all SMTP Receive events from the MS Exchange server that are initiated by remote SMTP servers, such as a mail transfer agent or an email server on the Internet.

Only inbound emails are processed on a typical (and recommended) deployment. Outbound and internal emails within the organization are not processed.

Integration with the Positive Selection® Engine

Before you integrate Votiro Cloud for Email with the Microsoft Exchange Edge Transport Server, you must verify that the Attachment Filtering function is disabled. Run the Disable-TransportAgent Attachment Filtering Agent Exchange PowerShell command to disable the function.

When an SMTP session is initiated with the Microsoft Exchange Edge Transport Server services, it generates an email that is processed and then routed to Votiro Cloud for Email transfer agent. Votiro Cloud for Email implements the Votiro API and queues the files for positive selection by the Positive Selection® Engine.

When a file is successfully uploaded to the Positive Selection® Engine for processing, Votiro Cloud for Email polls the engine for the status. Polling continues throughout the positive selection process, until the file is downloaded. These requests enable internal coordination, tracking and bi-directional communication for each file transferred to the Positive Selection® Engine for processing. Each status request tracks the time and processing of the email through the positive selection process. The possible responses to the status requests are described in the following table.

Although the email is transferred to the Positive Selection® Engine during the SMTP session, the SMTP session is not considered complete until the Positive Selection® Engine processes the file, which means that the initiating server does not receive delivery approval for the file until positive selection processing is finished. To ensure that the positive selection process does not cause timeouts to be triggered, you might need to adjust the respective timeout values for any of the preceding components. For example, the timeout values of the initiating servers, such as anti-spam or mail relay might need to be adjusted.

If the Positive Selection® Engine cannot process the file, *** Unsanitized *** is added to the beginning of the subject line of the email. To ensure business continuity, the email is routed to the next SMTP server in the process of delivering the email to the recipient.

You can configure the text that will be added to the subject line of an unsanitized email. In the WebApiHandlerConfig.xml configuration file, edit the following line, as needed.

SubjectPrefixOnError="***Unsanitized***"

The SMTPActionOnError configuration parameter in the WebApiHandlerConfig.xml file provides two options for handling emails that have failed to undergo positive selection:

Example

<SmtpSettings SmtpActionOnError="Pass">

Note

The characters &, <, >, ‘, and “ are not permitted within the attribute value in an XML file.

Email Connector-Specific Internet X-Headers

Each email that is processed by Votiro Cloud for Email includes Email Connector-specific internet X-headers. The X-headers provide key information that relates to the positive selection processing, tracking and troubleshooting of each email.

X-Headers are not usually visible to the recipients unless they specifically request the header information from the email client application.

The X-Header X-MTConnectorResult returns the final status of the positive selection process for the email. Below are the descriptions for the results.