Mail

Liferay's Mail portlet enables your users to interact with their email using an easy to use, ubiquitous web interface. If your mail system supports the IMAP protocol, you can use the Mail portlet to integrate your users' mail with the rest of your web site. You can also connect the Mail portlet to a mail account provided by Google.

The Mail portlet is distributed with the Liferay bundles, but is not included as part of the .war distribution, as it is a separate plugin. If you installed the Liferay .war manually on your application server, you can install the Mail portlet by going to the Control Panel, clicking Plugins Installation, and then clicking the Install More Portlets button. Find the Mail portlet in the list, click on it, and then click Install.

Illustration 81: Liferay Mail portlet

To connect the Mail portlet with an email account, click the Add a New Email Account link. From there, you are given a choice between a Custom email Account or a Gmail Account. Choose the option that you wish, and fill out the form that appears.

For a Gmail account, all you need to do is provide your email address and your password, and the portlet will take care of the rest.

For a Custom Mail Account, the following fields are necessary:

Address: The email address which receives mail for this account.

Login: The user name for logging into the account.

Password: The password for logging into the account.

Incoming Settings: The host name for your IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) or POP server.

Incoming Port: The port upon which the IMAP or POP service is running.

Use Secure Incoming Connection: Check this box to use an encrypted connection to the server, if your server supports it.

Outgoing SMTP Server: The host name of your SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) server.

Outgoing Port: The port upon which the SMTP service is running.

Use Secure Outgoing Connection: Check this box to use an encrypted connection to the server, if your server supports it.

When finished, click Save. Your new email account now appears as a tab at the top of the page along with the button for adding a mail account. In this way, you can add as many mail accounts as you want in order to view them in the portlet.

If you click the tab for the mail account you just configured, you will be brought to an interface which allows you to read your mail and compose new messages. To read a message, click on it. To compose a new message, click the Compose Email link on the left side of the portlet. You will be brought to a form which allows you to compose an email message using the same rich text editor that appears everywhere else in Liferay. You can read, reply, and create messages, as well as manage all of your folders in Liferay's Mail portlet.

The Mail portlet is a great way to integrate a familiar service with other collaboration features that Liferay provides.