I've tried setting the outgoing email server to both our external mail host (they require smtp authorization so it may be failing just based on that) and also an internal mail server that we have (i put in the IP of the internal box) and i have alerts turned on for the team discussion section for any and all changes and no mail ever gets received - i'm very new to the sharepoint world and really would like to get this feature working - thank you.Randy

Hi Randy,I will provide you with some links thatmigt help, but please try to reconfigure your settings, and start with your internal mail server to be sure it is working, then try the external- http://blogs.msdn.com/vedvyas/archive/2009/09/02/troubleshooting-moss-alerts.aspx- http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/sharepointadmin/thread/76214041-816a-41de-95ca-ba305e0efa64/- http://sharepointalert.info/troubleshooting-sharepoint-alerts/Best Regards, Ammar MCT

Thank you for the links - i am 100% certain the internal mail server is working - we push notifications thru there from another server when scheduled jobs complete so i know that is functioning properly. Randy

Verify that your SMTP service is running and that your mail server accpet anonymous connection.Is your internal mail server Exchange 2007 or above? Jawhar

It is not exchange we are using - it's a module in the C ++ library that we wrote an app for the developers here tell me - and i'm using the SMTP feature of IIS - i apologize if this doesn't fully explain our issue but i dont really know how else to it's the IIS version of SMTP services that i was hoping to make sharepoint work with. Thank you. Randy

The C++ module you mention is almost certainly something that is sending the emails to an smtp server and not really relevant to getting SharePoint outgoing emails working. This primer may be of use if smtp/email is new to you -http://sharepointalert.info/2009/10/smtp-primer/ So you've setup SharePoint's outgoing emails to use your internal IIS SMTP server but what happes after that? Have you set up IIS SMTP to relay onto your external mail host, if not then the emails will just sit there. This post talks about how to setup IISSMTP to relay messages onto gmail (which requires authentication) and may be useful for you. http://fmuntean.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/how-to-configure-iis-smtp-server-to-forward-emails-using-a-gmail-account/ (Site currently broken so give you cache link) http://66.102.9.132/search?q=cache:GblrJPz5DjAJ:fmuntean.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/how-to-configure-iis-smtp-server-to-forward-emails-using-a-gmail-account/+How+to+Configure+IIS+SMTP+Server+to+forward+emails+using+a+Gmail+account So the next step is to use Telnet or an smtp test tool actually on your SharePoint box, using the same smtp server that you've got set in outgoing email settings and check the emails get through http://sharepointalert.info/2009/11/troubleshooting-sharepoint-email-alerts-check-email-setupinfrastructure/

Also, please take a look at this article : http://blogs.technet.com/steve_chen/archive/2009/11/20/alerts-in-sharepoint-troubleshooting-moss-wss.aspx