Siebel Email Response Administration Guide > Tables and Reference > How the Internet SMTP/POP3 Driver Processes Email Messages >

Attachments Created by the POP3 SMTP Driver When Inbound Email is Received

A number of different files are created by the POP3 SMTP driver as a result of processing inbound and outbound email messages. Some of these files are temporary, and some may be permanent depending on the profile parameters used. All numbers used in the file names are in Hexadecimal format.

Siebel Email Response generates internal attachments upon receipt of plain text or HTML emails. These internally generated attachments appear in addition to any external attachments associated with the email by the email sender. No internally generated attachment is sent with a Reply, Reply to All, or Forward message.

SMTP_A_B_C_D_E_F.tmp

When the driver is used to send a message, it creates one file with the naming convention SMTP_A_B_C_D_E_F.tmp where

• A = the process ID of the application that loaded the driver
• B = the SCAPI handle of the driver
• C = the SCAPI handle of the service
• D = the time at which the service was created
• E = the number of the messages sent from this service
• F = the number of milliseconds elapsed since the application was started

This file is the encoded MIME message that will be sent to the SMTP server for delivery. This file created under bin/sent unless the Sent Email Directory profile parameter is specified. This file is deleted after the message has been sent from the disk to the SMTP server unless the Save Sent Msg profile parameter is set to TRUE.

POP3_A_B_C_D_E_F.tmp

When the driver is used to retrieve a message, it creates a file to store the incoming message with the naming convention POP3_A_B_C_D_E_F.tmp where

• A = the process ID of the application that loaded the driver
• B = the SCAPI handle of the driver
• C = the SCAPI handle of the service
• D = the time at which the service that received the message was created
• E = the number of the messages received during the current POP3 session
• F = the number of milliseconds elapsed since the application was started

This file is the MIME message retrieved from the POP3 server. This file stores the incoming message and is always created in the bin/incoming directory unless the Incoming Email Directory profile parameter is specified. If the Delete Processed Messages profile parameter is FALSE then these messages are moved to the bin/processed directory after they have been processed, otherwise they are deleted.

After a MIME message has been downloaded to the bin/incoming directory, it is parsed and the results are usually passed to the Communications Inbound Manager. This file will not be reprocessed when the Communications Inbound Manager is restarted. Therefore, if a system failure occurs, there could be one or more of these files stranded in the bin/incoming directory. These files may be deleted without consequence. The messages represented by the POP3_A_B_C_D_E_F.tmp files will be re-retrieved and will not be lost.

ATT_A_B_C_D_E_F_G.dat

When the driver is used to retrieve a message, it creates a file to store attachments that are parsed from the incoming message with the naming convention ATT_A_B_C_D_E_F_G.dat where

• A = the process ID of the application that loaded the driver
• B = the SCAPI handle of the driver
• C = the SCAPI handle of the service
• D = the time at which the service that received the message was created
• E = the number of the messages received during the current POP3 session
• F = the number of attachments found so far in the message
• G = the number of milliseconds elapsed since the application was started

When the message is parsed, all non-inline message parts and textual parts of the message are used in the creation of the attachment files in the bin/incoming directory.

Another special instance of tis type of file is created when an embedded message is found within the message that is being parsed. Embedded messages cause the creation of one of two types of files as follows:

• A file with the internal name of EmbeddedMsgX.xml that contains the embedded message header and all plain text parts of the mail. The purpose of this file is the same as for OriginalMessageText_A_B_C_D_E_F.txt.
• A file with the internal name EmbeddedMsgX.eml that contains the MIME message of the embedded message. This file can be opened with Microsoft Outlook Express. This file is only created if the Parse Embedded Messages profile parameter is explicitly set to FALSE, in which case the EmbeddedMsgX.xml file is not created.

OriginalMessageText_A_B_C_D_E_F.txt

When the driver is used to retrieve a message, it creates a file to store a file to store the header and textual data from the incoming message with the naming convention OriginalMessageText_A_B_C_D_E_F.txt where

• A = the process ID of the application that loaded the driver
• B = the SCAPI handle of the driver
• C = the SCAPI handle of the service
• D = the time at which the service that received the message was created
• E = the number of the messages received during the current POP3 session
• F = the number of attachments found so far in the message
• G = the number of milliseconds elapsed since the application was started

This file contains the MIME format of the message as received by the SMTP/POP3 driver. The original message header as well as all text/plain message parts that are not contained inside an embedded message part and not marked "inline" are written to a file in UTF-8.

It is the responsibility of the Email Response Workflows to delete the ATT and OriginalMessageText files. If there are ATT or OriginalMessageText files in the bin/incoming folder, then the Communications Inbound Manager process must have terminated abnormally OR the email events that created these files have not yet been processed. These temporary files should not be manually deleted until it is verified that none of the email events under the bin/queued directory reference the temporary files.

Current_A_B.ids and Previous_A_B.ids

To avoid retrieving duplicate messages when a POP3 session is abnormally terminated, the unique message-ids associated with each processed message are stored (in order to keep track of previously retrieved messages) in two files with the naming conventions Current_A_B.ids and Previous_A_B.ids where

• A = is the POP3 server name
• B = is the POP3 account name

The Current index file stores all the message ids that have been passed to the Communications Inbound Manager for workflow processing in the current POP3 session. If the POP3 session terminates abnormally, the POP3 QUIT command is never executed and the POP3 DELE commands for the current POP3 session are not committed. To avoid re-retrieving the messages from the previous session, the driver checks for a Current index file on startup and if it exists, it is appended to the Previous index file. Before a message is retrieved from the POP3 server, a check is made against the Previous index file to see if that message has already been processed.

These files may be deleted, but if a POP3 session has just terminated abnormally and then these files are deleted, then it is possible that ("POP3 Batch Size" - 1) messages could be duplicated.

These files will never become large because they are erased each time a POP3 session terminates normally. In addition, they will never be bigger than ("POP3 Batch Size" * 128) bytes.

POP3SMTP_A_B_C_D_E.log

Each service instance may also create a log file if the LogDebug profile parameter is set to TRUE. Depending on the error logging level, this may contain very little or quite a lot of tracing data. This log file is always created in the same directory as all the other Siebel log files. This file has naming convention PO3SMTP_A_B_C_D_E.log where

• A = the process ID of the application that loaded the driver
• B = the SCAPI handle of the driver
• C = the SCAPI handle of the service
• D = the time at which the service that received the message was created
• E = the number of milliseconds elapsed since the application was started