Administrator relief on the way

2004-05-10T15:42:39Z

Anouncement: Two new tools for IMAP-Agent are now in development. Both of these tools are expected to be released in June.

IMAP-Agent Remote Admin:

Allows site administrators to remotely edit any of the IMAP-Agent XML configuration files.

IMAP-Agent Folder Management:

An ASP.NET web based application for end users to manage their own mail filter rules.

Mercury remote plugin

2004-04-13T18:35:39Z

I'm happy to announce the Mercury32 Mailserver remote password lookup plugin for IMAP-Agent.

This plugin has two separate parts. One is a windows services that should be installed on the machine where Mercury is installed, or at least should have folder access on that machine.

The second is a client that plugs in to IMAP-Agent so it should be installed on the machine where IMAP-Agent is installed.

Both service and client can be installed on the same machine if you wish.

Note:
There is also a non-remote version for those who might need it. See the Files section for that version.

IMAP-Agent 0.8 release.

2004-04-06T18:46:41Z

This release contains all the project source plus the compiled executable located in the release folder.

Mail Servers tested on so far:

'Mercury - Mercury (Win32 version): 4.01a
http://www.pmail.com/whatsnew/m32401.htm

'Cyrus IMAP Server
http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/imapd/

All planned functionality for IMAP-Agent is now completed and tested.
In addition, a password lookup plugin has been written for the Mercury mailserver and a custom rule plugin template has been written and published.

There are install or readme notes to help but you should review the documentation also before using. The installation of the executable is simple. You will have to construct the configuration file (site.xml) and this will be the most tedious part. There is a sample of that file in the documentation. The configuration file was designed with many sensible defaults to make it easy for sites that don't use all the bells and whistles, while the more complex configuration demands a little reading on your part.

As a sidenote, I fully expect sites that want to use IMAP-Agent to write their own password lookup plugins based on their specific setup. A plugin can be any command line program or script that can take arguments on stdin and return a password on stdout.

I have been able to do my testing with IMAP-Agent running directly on the same machine with the mailserver, on my laptop on the same LAN and also accross the internet without any problems.

Note: If you intend to use the Mercury plugin, you will have to be running IMAP-Agent either on the mailserver or in it's local LAN because of the special requirements of the plugin itself.

Located in the release folder of the IMAPAgent project is LumiSoft.Net.dll which provides a socket class and some code to work with MIME requirements. The LumiSoft project is freeware that I am not affiliated with in any way. I make no claims about the LumiSoft software except to say it is available here http://www.lumisoft.ee/lsWWW/ENG/Products/Mail_Server/mail_index_eng.aspx?type=info. I am using only a small portion of the IMAP client that is part of the Lumisoft application and that is subject to change.

IMAP-Agent 0.7 release.

2004-04-02T19:30:57Z

This release contains all the project source plus the compiled executable located in the debug folder.

I have been testing this release on two production IMAP servers for about a week. I'm still using test mailboxes but the release is testing very stable so far and I will be running against production mailboxes in the next week or so.

Mail Servers tested on so far:

'Mercury - Mercury (Win32 version): 4.01a
http://www.pmail.com/whatsnew/m32401.htm

'Cyrus IMAP Server
http://asg.web.cmu.edu/cyrus/imapd/

The folder aging features are in this release.
I fixed about 10 bugs based on testing.
Testing continues.

Initially IMAP-Agent will rely on the account passwords to be in the XML tags. This is temporary. There is a design for IMAP-Agent to call out to a user defined process to retrieve the passwords. There is no plan for passwords to be stored, but will have to be retrieved before each connection.

The next feature to be added is the password lookup plugin. I'm going to write a plugin for the Mercury mailserver since that is what I use, probably in c# also. I don't have access to the Cyrus mailserver so I won't be writing a plugin for that.

As a sidenote, I fully expect sites that want to use IMAP-Agent to write their own password lookup plugins based on their specific setup. A plugin will be any command line program or script that can take arguments on stdin and return a password on stdout.

Located in the debug folder and release folder of the IMAPAgent C# project is LumiSoft.Net.dll which I provides a socket class and some code to work with MIME requirements. The LumiSoft project is freeware that I am not affiliated with in any way. I make no claims about the LumiSoft software except to say it is available here http://www.lumisoft.ee/lsWWW/ENG/Products/Mail_Server/mail_index_eng.aspx?type=info. I am using only a small portion of the IMAP client that is part of the Lumisoft application and that is subject to change.

IMAP-Agent 0.5 release.

2004-03-07T00:59:34Z

IMAP-Agent 0.5 release.

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO RUN THIS VERSION IN PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT.

This release contains only some parts of the project.
1. The c# project files.
2. Mock ups of the XML configuration files. I took the two I'm using for my testing and changed any personal user information to be generic. I will be releasing a data dictionary for the XML data in the near future. I haven't formalized any documentation but will be posting some in the near future.

Generally, the XML files are used to specify mail account information and mailbox rules that get applied when IMAP-Agent runs. The Site.XML file contains all site wide settings and can optionally contain individual user settings or can point to other XML files containing the individual user settings.

Near term todo list includes:

1. Add logging code for reporting and debugging.
2. Detail document of the XML files.
3. Program flow diagram

IMAP-Agent is progressing

2004-03-03T17:16:20Z

Well, I didn't manage to get files released in February for this project. Part of my progress for IMAP-Agent was to code a logging module. I decided that module was decent enough to create a project just for it and did get that class released. https://sourceforge.net/projects/logthis/

So part of IMAP-Agent is already released in a manner of speaking. It took me some number of days to figure out how to do cvs imports and how to release files. Hopefully I can get back to coding this application now.

I have been unit testing various parts of the project and it's getting pretty solid (for beta).
I have to do some coding on the sockets class and some general clean up before posting the first release.

The first release will be in March as I intend to begin testing it on my production mail server very soon.

Project IMAP-Agent is started.

2004-02-02T19:18:10Z

IMAP-Agent is now launched. I'm pleased to announce that design and code development are already well under way. I'm expecting to post Alpha/Beta grade files in the month of February.

I am using the free Mercury mail server so my testing will be conducted against its IMAP server.

The main purpose of this project is to provide a means to move mail between folders based on search (regex) criteria on the subject line, mail headers or body of the message.
The need for this IMAP-Agent originates from mail servers that don't provide delivery filter functionality. In those cases the needed functionality is thrust on the IMAP client software.
This tends to limit the choices for users when selecting an email client and complicates life for administrative server personnel regarding client configuration support and generally reduces the positive experience that should be associated with the email experience.

My primary goal is to be able to move newly arrived messages that have been marked as SPAM out of the Inbox to a Junk folder where the user can still manage their own SPAM and more importantly can look for false positives without calling administrative staff. Additionally, an aging process would then periodically delete old Junk messages either by the age of the message (like 15 days old) or by max count in the folder (like 100 messages).
To increase the usefulness, I decided to make the process more generic and allow mail filters to be run on any folder and search for any specified text and also to be able to perform the aging process against any folder.

Recent posts to news

Administrator relief on the way

Mercury remote plugin

IMAP-Agent 0.8 release.

IMAP-Agent 0.7 release.

IMAP-Agent 0.5 release.

IMAP-Agent is progressing

Project IMAP-Agent is started.