Windows Azure Pack – Notifications

The Windows Azure Pack provides a feature called notifications that enables to send E-mail. Notifications can be useful for tenants for example to receive an E-mail to obtain their forgotten password. It can also be used to increase the level of security by sending an e-mail to tenants which sign up to validate their identity. this avoids the bot registration pollution.

It is pretty easy to activate this feature. You need only an SMTP Server. This can be an Exchange server or by using a Webmail as Outlook.com. For my example I use the second solution because I haven’t got an SMTP server at home (and Exchange it’s not my cup of tea J).

SMTP server configuration

To configure notifications, first we have to add an SMTP server. For that, connect to the administrative portal and navigate to User Accounts. Next select notifications and click on Add a new SMTP setting:

Then specify the SMTP server address and port. For example to use outlook.com, you have to specify below settings:

Next select authentification method and credential. To use Outlook.com service, specify Basic authentication and enter credential that you use to connect to your Webmail.

Once the SMTP settings are validated, you should have something similar as below screenshot :

Notification rules

Once the SMTP server is configured, you have to set some rules. These three below rules are default rules provided by the Windows Azure Pack. It is possible to create your own rules. Click on the first to set the rule and activate it.

Once you have opened the rule configuration, you can see the variables as “EMAIL”, “USERNAME” and “NEWPASSWORD” that will be used in the message. Each variable is associated with an object managed by the Windows Azure Pack.

Next you can specify the message settings. You can call variables described in the parameters section by adding # symbol before and after the variable name (#Email#, #UserName#, #NewPassword#).

Don’t forget to enable the rule and to select the SMTP server.

Example: Activate Forgot password option

Once your rule is set and activated you can use it from the User Accounts Configure menu.

Activate the Forgot Password feature by clicking on Yes.

And now, when you connect to the tenant self-portal, you have the Forgot Password? Link:

If I click on the link and I enter my E-mail address, I receive a message to reset my password.

Following the link, you can reset your password.

If you open the Outbox menu, you should have something like that:

Notifications are cosmetics but necessaries to avoid tickets to change tenant passwords for exampleJ.

About Romain Serre

Romain Serre works in Lyon as a Senior Consultant. He is focused on Microsoft Technology, especially on Hyper-V, System Center, Storage, networking and Cloud OS technology as Microsoft Azure or Azure Stack. He is a MVP and he is certified Microsoft Certified Solution Expert (MCSE Server Infrastructure & Private Cloud), on Hyper-V and on Microsoft Azure (Implementing a Microsoft Azure Solution).

One comment

  1. Thank you very much ! You have cleared out the difference between them.

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