CASE STUDY - OHIO UNIVERSITY
David Hannum - Lead Web Analyst/Programmer
=== The Problem ===
At Ohio University, we have several applications which include web forms
that faculty or advisors can use to email a student or a list of students. These
applications are built with ColdFusion, and were utilizing CFMAIL to handle
these form generated email messages. With the ever present problem of
viruses bogging down networks, the administrators of our main campus
email system installed a process for scanning incoming and outgoing emails
for viruses. Immediately, as soon as the scanning began, we noticed that
CFMAIL (which tends to have issues to begin with) quit working all together.
We checked with our network folks, and they informed us that they now queue
up email to be scanned. This was a change from the way the system had
functioned before. As it turns out, CFMAIL chokes if the incoming email
must be queued up on the receiving end. We were dead, because our network
administrators were not going to open this back up.
=== The Solution ===
Being a ColdFusion developer, I'd often read on the various CF support lists
of the problems that many were having with CFMAIL. I'd also read of a
product call iMS Mail from ODS that some were using with a great degree of
success. Since here on campus, we are not going to support multiple campus
email addresses, the iMS Post Server seemed just perfect for the mailings we
wanted to do. For the "Quick Fix" we simply installed the iMS Post server
and continued to use CFMAIL, simply relaying the message through the Post
server, vs the University mail server. The result was that we were back up
in a matter of hours from when the problem was discovered - without changing
a line of code in our applications. However, from time to time the inherent
CFMAIL problems would arise. So, when the call came to
modify the applications to allow faculty to attach files to the email
messages, it became the perfect opportunity to begin using the CFX_iMSMail
custom ColdFusion tag that comes with the iMS Server. This CFX tag allows
us to completely by-pass the CFMAIL issues and deposit the messages and
attachments in the output queue of the iMS Post Server. So in modifying the
applications to accept attachments, we also modified the applications to use
the CFX_iMSMAIL tag.
=== The Result ===
We've been using the iMS Post server for about two years now, and we've
been using the CFX_iMSMAIL custom tag for about 5 months. The result is
that our applications that generate mail are solid as a rock. Since we've
installed the CFX tags, we've not had a single email resolve undeliverable
for these applications. ODS's iMS Mail Post Server has been one of the best
investments we've made here at Ohio University.
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