One of the significant changes in Elliott Version 8 is the improved e-mail feature. Version 8 e-mail now supports both MAPI and SMTP.  SMTP is an industry standard e-mail protocol and was introduced as the preferred e-mail protocol in Version 8.  You also have the option of using the traditional MAPI protocol convention supported with previous 7.x versions of Elliott.

The biggest reason for supporting SMTP in Elliott V8 is due to Outlook Enhanced Security. Because most e-mail viruses are implemented based on MAPI technology, Microsoft decided to stop these viruses by introducing Outlook Enhanced Security.  As a result, when any program -- including Elliott V7.X -- tries to send e-mail with a MAPI interface through your desktop Outlook, you will see a message that “another program is trying to send e-mail on your behalf,” and you’ll be asked if you wish to let this e-mail proceed. While this is an effective solution to block viruses, it also renders Elliott’s mass e-mail or events useless.  There are ways to address this problem, but they tend to be technically challenging. A lot of Elliott users did not take advantage of Elliott’s e-mailing capability for this reason.

On the other hand, e-mail through SMTP does not have the same limitation as MAPI.  Therefore, supporting SMTP in Elliott V8 is the key to unlocking Elliott’s e-mail capabilities.  We are, however, continuing to support MAPI.  If you’re able to resolve the technical challenges involved in using MAPI, you’ll find that there are certain advantages that it presents.  For example, sent MAPI e-mails will show up in your e-mail outbox, while they won’t with SMTP.  In addition, we have found that certain hosted e-mail service providers do not allow related e-mails through SMTP.

To choose whether you’ll use SMTP or MAPI for sending e-mails in Elliott, you can go to your Elliott V8 installation direction <root>\BIN folder and run the EL800CF.EXE program, which will allow you to make an Elliott system configuration change.  (See the example below.)

Default e-mail settings are configured through EL800CF.EXE, but each individual user can choose to override the default setting by using the Setup/Preference feature in the software.

Here are additional e-mailing features in Elliott Version 8:

• Ability to send HTML e-mail in Mass Email function
• With SMTP, allows user to automatically “BCC” the sender
• With SMTP, provides central log of all Elliott-generated e-mails for auditing purposes
• Provides the option to disable individual users from sending e-mail in Elliott