Exchange Server 2010 with Oracle Workflow Mailer

Almost all Oracle E-Business Suite DBAs will run into this problem if they are using exchange server as their Workflow IMAP server. Workflow is a important component of Oracle E-Business Suite, and its mailer component adds a biggest oracle EBS feature of inbound mail processing of workflow approval and rejection email replies from end users.

The issue with exchange server is that by default, it doesn’t enable the plain text login mechanism for IMAP, and Oracle Workflow Mailer requires this authentication mechanism to work.

Here is a quick way to verify if your exchange server has the required authentication method enabled. Just telnet to the imap port of exchange server, type “a1 capability” and press enter. If you see LOGINDISABLED in the output, then it means the plan text authentication is not enabled for exchange IMAP service.

$ telnet exchange.pythian.com 143
Trying 10.23.10.101...
Connected to exchange.pythian.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK The Microsoft Exchange IMAP4 service is ready.
a1 capability
* CAPABILITY IMAP4 IMAP4rev1 LOGINDISABLED STARTTLS UIDPLUS CHILDREN IDLE NAMESPACE LITERAL+
a1 OK CAPABILITY completed.

If the authentication method is disabled, ask your admin to enable the plain authentication feature using this MS technet note. There is one thing that this note is missing: restart the Exchange IMAP service for the changes to come into effect. Typical Microsoft way of fixing things :).

I am interested to know your experiences with Oracle Workflow Mailer. Please post in the comments section! I’m all ears!!!