Because M5 is designed to run unattended for long period of time at a remote interrogation site, it is important for site stewards to be alerted of situations impacting data collection. When these critical alerts (such as the failure to connect to a transceiver after startup) are identified, M5 can send the alerts via email to a configured email address. Multiple alerts are often spooled into a single email. M5 requires the availability of a SMTP server to relay email from a remote interrogation site and this topic will help troubleshoot this feature. The default SMTP server host configured with M5 may or may not work for sending critical alerts depending upon how the network and domain is configured for the target site.

 

To test the emailing critical alert feature:

1.Edit Configuration settings for the M5 Monitor Service connected via M5 Control Panel.

a.The computer running M5 Monitor Service should be deployed to the interrogation site.

2.Enter a valid email address in the Alert Email Address field.

3.Press the  button next to the entered email address and a test email will be sent from the connected M5 Monitor Service and a response will indicate if the email was successfully sent.

a.If successfully sent, verify the test email exists for the configured email address.

b.If not successfully sent, the default SMTP server setting may need to be changed as described in next section.

To update the default SMTP server configuration associated with this feature:

1.An account with elevated privileges is required to modify this configuration.

2.Obtain your agency’s SMTP host name from your system administrator.

a.Please contact us if your agency’s SMTP server requires password authentication or other security features are enabled preventing this host from being used.

3.Copy the appsettings.json file located in the M5 Monitor Service installation folder to a temporary folder.

a.On Windows machines, the installation folder is C:\Program Files\PTAGIS\M5 Monitor Service

b.On Linux machines, the installation folder is /opt/ptagis/m5

4.Open the appsettings.json file in the temporary folder for editing and update the AlertEmailLocalSmtpServer setting’s value with your agency’s host name and save the file.

5.Copy the file back to the installation folder, overwriting original.

6.Restart the Windows service or systemd service for the new setting to take effect.

7.Repeat the test outlined in the previous section.