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Mail Application Scout
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This feature has limited access. To try it, please contact your sales representative.
The minimum Custom Hive version to run this Scout is 1222.
What is a Mail Application Scout
Use the Mail Application Scout to test if your mail servers are working correctly. The Scout can alert you if a mail server is down or taking longer than expected to transmit emails. Currently, the Scout supports testing Microsoft Exchange Online mail servers.
The Scout can perform two types of tests:
- Incoming mail - This test sends an email from a Synthetic Monitoring server to your mail server. Your mail server is accessed from the location (Hive) running the Scout to validate that the email was received successfully.
- Outgoing mail - This test sends an email from your mail server to a Synthetic Monitoring server. Your mail server is accessed from the location (Hive) running the Scout to send the email, and the Synthetic Monitoring server validates that the email was received successfully.
To best monitor a mail server's performance, you should create two Scouts to test both incoming and outgoing emails.
Create a user for the scout
When you configure a Scout for either type of test, you must authenticate to your mail server with a user that has a mailbox.
When setting up a user, note the following:
- We recommend creating a dedicated user specifically for running this Scout. For optimal security, this user should be authorized exclusively for the mail service.
- If you choose to create a user with access to multiple services, and your identity management system supports multiple mail services, ensure that the Exchange server tested by this Scout is set as the primary server.
- To ensure the Mail Scout works properly, mark the scoutbees.io and eu.scoutbees.io domains as trusted in all email policies. Synthetic emails may be flagged as spam due to their repetitive, templatized nature, risking delivery issues.
You can run the Scout from one of the preconfigured Cloud Hives locations, or you can install a Custom Hive on-premises to run the Scout from a custom location.
Create a Mail Application Scout
- Click Create Scout.
- Select the Applications tab and set the scout Type to Mail Application.
- Select the Hives to run the Scout. This is the location that accesses your mail server to either send or receive a test email, depending on the Direction you select in step 7.
- In the Mail Service field, select the type of mail service to test. Currently, only Microsoft Exchange Online is supported.
- Enter a Name for the Scout.
- With the Run Every slider, set how often the Scout performs a test.
- Set the Direction. Read the introduction to this article for details about each direction.
- Click Sign in with Microsoft and sign in with a user that has a mailbox.
- Optionally, add labels to the Scout. Labels are key-value pairs to help you organize your Scouts.
- Click Show additional parameters if you want to change the Timeout duration. A test is considered a failure if the email is not successfully sent and received before the timeout duration has been reached. You can set the timeout duration between 30 seconds and 180 seconds.
- Click Next: Alert Policy to set up alerts and notifications before saving the Scout. For more information, see Alert Policies.
Test Results
Incoming and outgoing tests both record the total delivery duration of the mail, but incoming tests break down the total delivery duration into the total delivery duration across all hops and the server processing time.
Test metrics
The metrics in the table below are collected for each test result.
Metric name | Description |
---|---|
Delivery Duration to Mail Server (incoming mail) | The time it takes an email to pass all hops from the Synthetic Monitoring server until one hop before the last one (pre-last hop), which is your mail server. |
Server Processing Duration (incoming mail) | The time it takes your mail server to process the email. |
Client to Server Duration (outgoing mail) | The time it takes an email to pass from a client stimulated by the hive to your mail server. |
Server Processing Duration (outgoing mail) | The time it takes your mail server to process the email. |
Server to Final Destination Duration (outgoing mail) | The time it takes an email passing from your mail server to the final destination, which is the Synthetic Monitoring server. |
Test examples
Incoming mail
The screenshot below shows the Scout details page for an incoming test. The chart on the left shows the total mail delivery duration, while the chart on the right shows the duration for each phase in the process.
Click on the results of an individual test to see more details.
To see all of the hops, click View more. Hover over a hop for additional information. Note that the time for each hop is accurate only to the nearest whole second.
Outgoing mail
The screenshot below shows the Scout details page for an outgoing test. The chart on the left shows the total mail delivery duration, while the chart on the right shows the duration for each phase in the process.
Click on an the results of an individual test to see more details.
To see all of the hops, click View more. Hover over a hop for additional information.
Note that the time for each hop is accurate only to the nearest whole second.