Troubleshooting Tempurity™ System E-mail Delivery

Updated March 2023

Introduction to Troubleshooting Tempurity Email Alarm Notification

This purpose of this document is to describe some steps to follow when Tempurity System test alarm notifications are not received as expected.

The Tempurity System requires a valid account on a mailserver in order to send alarm notifications. The system needs to "log in" to that account using the given parameters to send the test or alarm notification message.

Tempurity System email alarm notifications are sent by the Tempurity Server but are initiated by the Tempurity Monitor. The means of testing is to first ensure that mail can be sent by entering mail system parameters into the Tempurity Server and testing. Once this is successful, alarm groups can be created in the Tempurity Monitor. When the alarm group is finished being created test alarm notification messages are always sent out to each alarm notification address (email, text, etc) in the alarm notification group.

It is the responsibility of our users to ensure that system test messages are received as expected before relying on the system for the ability to send operational alarm notifications.

Using Gmail with Tempurity™

A configuration step must be taken in order to use Gmail as the mail engine that will send Tempurity System alarm notifications. You will need to set the "less secure apps" flag in your Gmail account.

Log into your account. Then you can go to this webpage

https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps

Google automatically turns off Less Secure Apps if it is not used. So make sure that you test your alarm notifications every month or more frequently.

Note that the Tempurity System sends mail to Gmail SSL-encrypted and thus sends mail securely. In this case the Less Secure Apps flag applies more to Google's antispam policy than to the privacy of the message.

Testing Alarm Notifications - Server-side

To test the ability of Tempurity to send alarm notifications, you can use the "Test" button in the Email Configuration Window of the Tempurity Server Configuration Utility.

The program will hourglass for a minute or so while it is testing e-mail sends. If the program responds with a failure message then a problem has prevented the Tempurity System from sending messages to the specified E-mail server.

Testing for Blocked Access to Mailservers

One of the most common reasons for the Server-side test to fail is that your organization may be blocking all mail requests sent directly to external mail servers. To test this we recommend the following:

From the Windows Command Prompt

Telnet smtp.gmail.com 25

Telnet smtp.networkedrobotics.com 25

If the connection is made bang on the keyboard a bit and see if the there is a response. Any response indiates that the connection is not blocked.

If Telnet is not available on your Windows machine, activate it in Control Panel - Programs - Turn Windows Features on or off - Telnet Client. No download is needed.

If the connection can not be made it is likely your institution or your ISP is blocking mail access to this mailserver. You will either need to select another mailserver or work with your network group to remove the block.

Testing Alarm Notifications - Monitor-side

To test the ability of Tempurity to send alarm notifications, you can use the "Test" button in the Tempurity Monitor Alarm Notification Group Wizard for any alarm notification group.

It is possible for the server-side test to work, and the monitor-side test to fail. The main reason for this is that the network TCP port used for server-monitor communication is in conflict with another application. This may be true even though all other server-monitor connections such as real time data display appear to be working normally.

Make sure that no applications on your Tempurity Server computer are acting as a webserver - that no applications are listening on TCP port 80, the http port. Examples of these applications are Internet Information Services or Apache. Some scientific applications also open this port.

Email Server Antispam Recognition and Changes and Testing

A general paradigm is that the administrators of mail servers are contnually watching for hacking that would generate spam. This kind of hacking is the bane of mail server administrators and they often take extreme steps to prevent it. Unfortunately Tempurity System alarm notification mail can look like spam in certain cases.

Mail administrators can implement new methods for recognizing spam at any moment. This means that a Tempurity System that has been working for months will sometimes suddenly become unable to send alarm notifications.

We recommending testing Tempurity Alarm Notification Groups a minimum of once per month to make sure that such changes have not been implemented that would block alarm notifications.

Conclusion

This document describes a method of evaluating potential problems in the reception of Tempurity System alarm notifications.

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