dale said:
Our company is using SMTP on the mail server. The help desk told me
that this is the only one we use to receive and send mails. We use
microsoft outlook to read and send emails. Outlook has web access as
well.
Outlook has a web interface to the mail stored on the server so that
employees can check their mail remotely. This is not terribly uncommon, as
most decent ISPs seem to provide web-based mail readers these days, too. One
problem springs to mind if you want to use the web interface, and that is
that you normally have to authenticate yourself using Windows authentication
(never tried it in Perl myself, so not certain how hard it would be to
automate).
I suspect what your helpdesk meant to tell you was that they have an
Exchange server running with the smtp service enabled. They can be excused
for being stupid, however, as they're probably M$ certified not to know the
difference.
Why do you think you have to use the web interface to send mail, though? The
interface is just a web app that reads what's in your inbox on the server
(i.e., an extra level of indirection, and an unnecessarily complicated means
of accessing your mail). You should find out what the name of your mail
server is and use it directly to send and receive mail, instead (which is
all that the web app is doing, by the way). There are plenty of mail modules
available on cpan that will allow you to send and receive mail, and I
believe some can be used for connecting to Exchange servers.
Matt
