Setup mail in planning analytics workspace

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Product:

Planning Analytics Workspace 88
Microsoft Windows 2019 server

Issue:

How setup the smtp mail function?

Solution:

Check that the port 25 is open from the TM1 server to the SMTP EXCHANGE server first.

Check that the SMTP EXCHANGE server accepts mail from the TM1 server – talk to the e-mail people at the company.

Update the bootstrap properties file located in folder D:\Program Files\ibm\cognos\tm1_64\paa_agent\wlp\usr\servers\kate-agent

 

Set these properties for un-encrypted mail internal at the company:

SMTP_EMAIL_PORT=25

SMTP_EMAIL_AUTH=FALSE

SMTP_EMAIL_HOST=smtp.servername.domain.com

SMTP_EMAIL_START_TLS_ENABLE=FALSE

SMTP_EMAIL_USERNAME=

SMTP_EMAIL_PASSWORD=

PAA_EMAIL_ADDRESS=donald@domain.com

SEND_GRID_API_KEY=""

SEND_GRID_EMAIL_URL=https\://api.sendgrid.com/v3/mail/send

After changes – you need to restart the windows service: IBM Planning Analytics Administration Agent

Then go to the PAW and the administration agent tab and click on the Test email button – enter your mail address at the company.

Then you can setup Alerts, so you will get a email when the disk is full.

To get the share book function to have a email option, you need to update the paw.ps1 file on the PAW server, with information like this:

$env:ENABLE_EMAIL="true"
$env:SENDGRID_API_KEY=""
$env:EMAIL_FROM="donald@domain.com"
$env:EMAIL_SMTP_URL="smtp://servername.domain.com:25"

 

You need to stop and start the PAW for the changes in paw.ps1 should take effect. run  .\paw.ps1 stop   ,then  .\paw.ps1  in the scripts folder.

if you get error – check the log file (app.log) in folder D:\PAW88\log\share-app on the PAW server.

Error [ERR_TLS_CERT_ALTNAME_INVALID]: Hostname/IP does not match certificate’s altnames:  can be that the EMAIL_SMTP_URL server name not match the DNS altnames. Change to other server name.

More Information:

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/planning-analytics/2.0.0?topic=only-configure-event-notifications 

https://community.ibm.com/community/user/businessanalytics/discussion/enabling-email-no 

https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/planning-analytics/2.0.0?topic=2wnj12-enable-email-notifications-in-planning-analytics-workspace-local

https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/planning-analytics-agent-messagelog-email-configuration-properties-missing 

https://pmsquare.com/analytics-blog/2020/11/8/ibm-planning-analytics-system-alerts-via-email

From Declan, Tm1 champion:

Setup in paw server

The obvious starting points are to gather details of your SMTP server, the port it uses (for sending email) – it can often have multiple ports available in which case – find out the “preferred” one. Generally speaking:

  • 587 – for TLS
  • 465 – For SSL
  • 25 – This might work (it does for office 365 at least) but general consensus is to not use it as it’s often blocked due to SPAM.

Also, gather the relevant account’s email and password.

Relevant Material

Based on googling the examples provided in the documentation:

I believe that node.js is being used to send the emails, and nodemailer.com/smtp has documentation covering most of the parameters used in the examples (e.g. ?Secure=true)

This doesn’t cover the tls.rejectUnauthorized=false that is used in the example, but looking that up suggests that in the event that your server can’t be verified it will go ahead and send the email anyway… so that sounds like a parameter that I would be cautious about using!

What Worked

Gmail:

  • $env:EMAIL_SMTP_URL=”smtp://<MyUserName>:<MyPassword>@smtp.gmail.com:587″
  • $env:EMAIL_SMTP_URL=”smtps://<MyUserName>:<MyPassword>@smtp.gmail.com:465″
  • $env:EMAIL_SMTP_URL=”smtps://<MyUserName>:<MyPassword>@smtp.gmail.com:465?secure=true&tls.rejectUnauthorized=false”

In all cases:

  • $env:ENABLE_EMAIL=”true”
  • $env:SENDGRID_API_KEY=””
  • $env:EMAIL_FROM=”<An email address that the credentials used in $env:EMAIL_SMTP_URL have access to send from>”