Documentation forIpMonitor
Effective December 31, 2024, IpMonitor will reach its end of life and will no longer be available or supported. If you liked IpMonitor, consider trying another SolarWinds product.

MAPI - User Experience monitor

The MAPI - User Experience Monitor simulates a round-trip email and measures the time it takes for a series of transactions to occur. Using collaboration data objects (CDO) or the message application program interface (MAPI), a program can connect to a MAPI store and perform operations against that store.

Use this monitor to verify that:

  • The SMTP mail server can accept and distribute email.
  • The Exchange server can authenticate users.
  • The Exchange server can respond correctly to MAPI commands.
  • MAPI clients can receive their email.
  • The Exchange server responds within a required number of seconds.

The monitor connects to the SMTP server on port 25 and sends an email message to the specified recipient address. Next, it logs in to Exchange server and uses the email account specified in the default Mail Profile to connect to an Exchange mailbox. It searches for the test email it sent and flags it for deletion. When finished, the MAPI User Experience monitor sends a LOGOUT command to Exchange Server.

The test is considered failed if:

  • The SMTP server fails to respond or returns an error code.
  • The Exchange Server fails to respond or returns an error code.
  • The MAPI - User Experience monitor is unable to locate the sent email.

Create a MAPI - User Experience monitor

  1. Click Devices in the toolbar.
  2. Locate and click the targeted device you want to monitor.

  3. In the toolbar, click Add > Add New Monitor.

  4. In the Select Monitor menu, click MAPI- User Experience.

  5. Under Identification, enter information about the monitor.

    1. Enter a name in the Monitor Name field using up to 64 characters. This name will appear in the monitor list, monitor status, log files, and your reports.

      You can change this name later, if necessary. ipMonitor does not use this field to internally identify this monitor.

    2. Select Enabled to enable the monitor.

      When enabled, the monitor tests the specified resource using the settings you enter under Test Parameters. You can disable the monitor later if required.

    3. Select Store Monitor Statistics for Recent Activity and Historical Reports to enable this functionality.

  6. Under Test Parameters, select a credential for monitoring. When selected, ipMonitor uses the credential account and password information to authenticate to the target machine and test the status of the drive or share.

  7. Under Analysis of Test Results, set up your sending and receiving email addresses.

    1. In the Email To field, enter the receiver email address for your test and distribution email.

      SolarWinds recommends setting up a dedicated email account to receive test and distribution emails.

    2. In the Email From field, enter the sender email address for the test email.
    3. Click Verify to confirm that the email credentials are valid.

  8. Under Timing, configure the fields for the monitor testing states.

    1. In the Maximum Test Duration field, enter the maximum test duration rate (in seconds) that the monitor times out before the test is considered a failure.

    2. In the remaining fields, enter the number of second between each test while the monitor is in an OK state (Up), a failed state while alerts are processed (Down), and a failed state and the maximum number of alerts have been processed (Lost).

      In the Lost state, no additional failure alerts are processed. However, a recovery notification is sent if the monitor recovers.

  9. Under Notification Control, complete the fields to determine how many test failures must occur before an alert is sent.

    1. Enter the number of test failures that occur for each alert before ipMonitor generates an alert for the monitor. The default option is 3.

    2. Enter the maximum number of alerts to send before the monitor enters a Lost state.

      The monitor must be assigned to a notification alert to generate an action.

  10. Under Recovery Parameters, complete the fields to indicate the corrective action used to automatically restore a resource using the External Process Recovery, Reboot Server Recovery, or Restart Service Recovery action.

    1. Enter the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), NetBIOS, or IP Address of the machine hosting the service that needs a restart or the machine that needs a restart. You can also click Browse to locate and select the machine.
    2. Select the set of credentials used by the recovery alert. You can select a specific credential to execute recovery alerts that require access to restricted resources, such as Reboot Server, Restart Service, or External Process.
    3. Select the list of services to restart on the target machine specified in the FQDN/NetBIOS/IP Address field. This field is only required for the Restart Service alert. If a service has dependencies, select all dependent services.
  11. Click OK.

Microsoft Outlook account requirements

To operate correctly, this monitor requires the following Microsoft Outlook environment:

  • Outlook: SolarWinds recommends uninstalling Outlook from the host server and using a CDO to create a MAPI profile.
  • Microsoft Outlook email account under the default Mail Profile of the Windows user account impersonated by the monitor

Use the Microsoft CDO

The following applies to Microsoft Outlook 2007 Users. After installing the client, you can then use the MFC MAPI tool to create a MAPI profile.

When using the MAPI Profile wizard, you need to set the default flag on creation. This is done by setting the flag to 0x00000003 on the wizard parameters page.

Set up a Windows Mail Profile

  1. Log in to the ipMonitor server using the Windows Domain Account that will be used by the MAPI - User Experience monitor.
  2. Install and launch Microsoft Outlook.
  3. Follow the steps outlined in the Outlook Startup wizard to configure the default Mail Profile for the domain account.

When you configure the MAPI User Experience monitor, the monitoring credential should reference the Windows account used to log in to the ipMonitor server.

Test email message

ipMonitor uses a message with a special subject line to test the send and receive ability of the IMAP4 mail server, similar to:

Subject: ipm8:imap4:guid:441991169