Configure Email

The telemetry alarm plugin provides services to YAAC for sending automated emails and SMS (cellphone text) messages when certain conditions are detected, such as telemetry alarm conditions. However, due to the ever-stricter environment for sending emails (no thanks to spammers and black-hat hackers), YAAC must be configured to connect to an Email Service Provider (ESP) that will forward the emails on behalf of the authenticated user. And the same applies to text messaging, as text messages not originated by a cellphone are sent by email to the cellphone carrier's SMS or MMS gateway.

The Email tab in the expert-mode configuration dialog provides the means by which the email settings are configured. The following parameters are available:

• The email address that should originate emails sent by YAAC, i.e., appearing in the From: line in the generated email messages. Note this should be a legitimate email address that you are authorized to use. Until you set this properly, YAAC will make its best-guess as to what your email address is, based on the computer domain name and login user name where YAAC is being executed.
• The fully-qualified domain name of your Email Service Provider's outbound email server, typically for the SMTP or SMTPS protocol. This is the same account information you would have entered into your email client program, such as Microsoft Outlook™ or Mozilla Thunderbird™.
• The port number the ESP's mail server is listening on. Common port numbers are 53 (the standard port for SMTP, the Simple Mail Transport Protocol) and 587 (the standard port for SMTP over TLS, otherwise known as secure SMTP). Do not use the POP or IMAP port numbers as documented by your ESP, as these are for receiving email, not sending it.
• Whether or not your Email Service Provider requires authentication to prove you have the authorization to send emails via their servers. You will almost always need to check this.
• The username assigned to you by the ESP. Typically, this is your full email address, such as user@example.com, but may be something else depending on your ESP.
• The password associated with your username. Note that YAAC does not have a secure means of storing your password, so do not use a personally-important email account that handles sensitive personal or financial information.
• To confirm that you have entered all the Email Service Provider parameters correctly, there is a Send Test E-mail button that will transmit a self-addressed email. This button will not be enabled until all the required parameters have been entered.
• In addition, to send SMS text messages, an SMS gateway must be specified. YAAC knows of over 170 different SMS gateways for cellphone carriers around the world, specific to each of those carriers. There are no free universal SMS gateways that will automatically figure out which carrier-specific gateway to forward the SMS emails to. There are pay services that can do this for you, but YAAC does not support their authentication protocols. So you must select the carrier for the cellphone(s) you are planning to text. A checkbox below the selection list allows you to choose seeing the carrier names, or the actual SMS gateway domain names to which the cellphone subscriber Mobile Identification Number (their phone number) is prefixed as the username. If the gateway you want is not on the list, you can manually type the gateway domain name into the listbox.