Detecting new mail?

[Robb Meade]

Hi all,

I am planning out the stages for an application at work, the application
needs to detect when a client has emailed 'us' and then trigger a new row
written to a database and email the client back by return.

I can see how most of what our application needs to do can be achieved with
ASP/SQL Server - but the part I am unsure of is the email detection...I
suppose the closest thing to what we are aiming for would be one of those
'helpdesk' apps that many companies have - you email them - you get an
automated confirmation email back by return with a ticket number etc etc -
anyone got any ideas on how I can achieve this?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Regards

Robb

 

[Robb Meade]

I should have added, obviously replies to emails being sent back and forth
from client to 'us' would need to be recorded also - ie, we'd detect the
ticket number/id in the subject etc...

 

[John Beschler]

I've never done this, but I'm willing to pass on what
little I do know.

You would need to have some kind of email service. This
could be something as simple as an email account from your
ISP. (POP3)

Then you would write code that would check that email
account on a regular basis. There are many packages
available on the internet (some free) that allow you to
access a POP3 account from VBScript. Do a search at
www.aspfaq.com, www.aspin.com. Part of this would also be
the code to update your database and send any response
emails necessary.


If your server is an exchange server, there are many 3rd
party tools that will allow you to "read" your exchange
inbox and process accordingly. In fact, there are examples
of how to access your exchange folders on Microsoft's web
site.

I hope some of this has at least given you an idea of
where to go from here.

John

 

[Robb Meade]

Thanks all for the replies.

Can anyone provide any links to 'free' components that I could use whilst
trying to test/develop this - happy to buy one when I know its all going to
work - but the one at serverobjects.com is a bit pricey for purely testing
purposes...

Still not sure that ASP is the way to go with this to be honest, I dont
think I can write something in ASP that will dynamically check for emails
without literally having a window open all the time and refreshing it...I
guess I need something else in between that does the check and does the
database update /

Thanks again for the replies.