Setting Up Mailing List Sources

A mailing list source enables users to search messages that were sent to a mailing list on an IMAP server.

The Oracle SES crawler is IMAP4 compliant. To crawl mailing list sources, you need an IMAP e-mail account. Oracle recommends that you create an e-mail account that is used solely for Oracle SES to crawl mailing list messages. The crawler is configured to crawl one IMAP account for all mailing list sources. Therefore, all mailing list messages to be crawled must be found in the Inbox of the e-mail account specified on this page. This e-mail account should be subscribed to all the mailing lists. New postings for all the mailing lists are sent to this single account and subsequently crawled.

Messages deleted from the global mailing list e-mail account are not removed from the Oracle SES index. The mailing list crawler deletes messages from the IMAP e-mail account as it crawls. The next time the IMAP account for mailing lists is crawled, the previous messages no longer exist. Any new messages in the account are added to the index and consequently deleted from the account. This keeps the global mailing list IMAP account clean. The Oracle SES index serves as a complete archive of all the mailing list messages.

The following procedures identify the basic steps for setting up a mailing list source using the Oracle SES Administration GUI. For more information on each page, click Help.

To create a mailing list source: 

1. Enter the global mailing list settings:

   1. On the Global Settings page, choose Mailing List Settings under Sources to display the Global Mailing List Settings page.

   2. Complete the following fields. Click Help for additional information.

      User Name: IMAP e-mail account that is used to crawl the messages. This user must be on all of the mailing lists identified as a mailing list source.

      Password: Password for User Name.

      IMAP Server: Address of the IMAP server, such as mail.example.com.

   3. Click Apply.

2. On the Home page, select the Sources secondary tab to display the Sources page.

3. For Source Type, select Mailing List.

4. Click Create to display the Create Mailing List Source page.

5. Complete the following fields. Click Help for additional information.

   • Source Name: Name that you assign to this table source.

   • Mailing List: Name of the mailing list to be searched, such as [e-mail].

6. Click Create.

7. Follow the steps for crawling and indexing in "Getting Started Basics for the Administration GUI" for the mailing list schedule.

Mailing List Attributes

Oracle SES crawls and indexes these search attributes.

• Author

• Title

• Subject

• Language

• LastModifiedDate