15280 - Use MAPI parameter to choose profile automatically

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(MailNews Core :: Backend, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Phil Peterson]

Hey Chris, want to take a crack at this one?

     Subject: MAPI sending needs manual intervention
        Date: Thu, 30 Sep 1999 15:34:09 +0100
        From: Bruce Robson <[e-mail]>
Organization: U.K.
  Newsgroups: netscape.devs-client-technical

I am trying to write an application that under certain conditions needs
to send an e-mail. I want this to happen with no need for manual intervention.

The application is being written in VB 5. I am using the vb 5 MAPI controls at
the moment although I could change to calling the functions in MAPI32.DLL
directly if necessary.

However when netscape is the MAPI server, I have found two places where it
can need manual intervention

1)  When starting the MAPI session, netscape is requiring me to select the
    netscape profile. This happens even if I set the UserName property
    of the MAPISession control to a valid netscape profile name.

2)  When sending the message I get a pop-up "This message cannot be encrypted
    because you do not have certificates for each of the recipients".

I think I could avoid these by only having one profile and not having
encryption enabled in that profile. However is it possible for my
application to avoid the need for manual intervention without changing
the netscape profile ?

Also is there anything else that could lead to netscape needing manual
intervention ?

Bruce Robson

Comment 1

[Chris White]

Multiple Profiles
=================
At first glance it looks as though MAPILogin does not really do anything with
login and password.  During the Login, if Communicator is not running it
launches a version of it with the parameter -MAPICLIENT, it is at this point
that Communicator by default prompts the user for the profile he/she would like
to use.  Only after Communicator is launched is the MAPILogin request actually
sent to the MAPIHook.  In order to do something like this I would need a command
line option to launch Communicator/Mozilla using the optional profile argument.

apprunner -profileName profile

This would actually be kind of a nice feature, it would actually be useful to me
I could have his/her apprunner start menu items/icons.

One question remains, if Communicator is already running using a profile of
"Heather" and a login request sends a profilename of "Chris", what do I do?

The current workaround is to have a single profile.

On Encryption
=============
This may be more difficult, I will have to check into if the encyption/signing
preferences are overridable.  If a user checks these options I would have to
assume they would want to use them if they are available provided that no user
intervention is required.  If the user selects these I would not be in a
position to determine if the user means, "If I can not sign/encrypt without
popping up a dialog don't send it", versus "Send it anyways", or "Prompt me".

A workaround is to not select the encrypt whenever possible option.

Although related, I would like to seperate the two issues.

I have run into both of these issues but, I am not aware of other issues that
may cause a window/dialog to be poped up requireing user intervention, except
that if you do not have a certificate and you have selected "Sign whenever
possible".

Possible Future Enhancement
===========================
On a number of occasions I have thought about making parts of MAPI scriptable so
that once inside a MAPI Hook function a script would fire that would process the
request.  I would expose the MAPIHook request to the script and allow it to do
the data mapping and set options that may not be supported by Simple MAPI.  A
default set of scripts that correspond to the "Simple MAPI Spec" would be
provided.


I would like to hear some comments on the issues prior to proceeding.
  - If an instance of Communicator is already running with another profile
selected, and the login name does not agree how should I handle it?  Fail the
MAPILogin?
  - What should I assume about the users intentions on how to handle
Encrytion/Signing.

Comment 2

[Phil Peterson]

> One question remains, if Communicator is already running using a profile of
> "Heather" and a login request sends a profilename of "Chris", what do I do?

I believe [e-mail] is looking into dynamic profile switching. I'm not
absolutely sure it's the right thing to do in this case, but it's one
possibility.

> On Encryption

I actually don't see what work there is for you, here. I think it's his problem
to make sure he has certs for each of the recipients. At least, that's how I'd
define the problem :-)

Does that help?

Comment 3

[Chris White]

Yes this does help.  Agreed on the Certs/Encryption part I just wanted to make
sure and run it by someone.  I will have to look into the dynamic profile
switching, I was kind of leaning toward failing the login if mozilla is already
running using a different login but, if time permits.  I will however make sure
that MAPILogin does not ignore profile name if passed.

Comment 4

[Chris White]

Not much progress has been made, going to re-assign to nobody so that I am not 
sitting on these issues.  Will probably pick up again in a month or two if they 
are still open issues when I have time and I can actually make some progress 
first.

Comment 5

[Hong Kwon]

Reassigning MAPI bugs to tiantian

Comment 6

[Tiantian Kong]

Reassigning to Krishna, and cc Rajiv.

Comment 7

[scottputterman]

reassigning to rdayal.

Comment 8

[Sam Katz]

This may be the bug I'm seeing exacerbated. I'm using ICQ, which being an AOL 
property, has always been absolutely simple MAPI compliant.

I made the mistake of setting Mozilla Mail as my default mail client while ICQ 
was running. I shut down ICQ and renamed the ICQ MAPI handler (MAPIICQ.DLL) to 
MAPIICQOLD.DLL effectively disabling it. This worked--in the sense that it 
launched Mozilla when I told ICQ to e-mail something.

But there is no indication that it is being sent, no indication that it has 
been sent, and no mail windows appear. Just a profile selection box and then a 
browser--as if I had launched the Mozilla browser manually.

Eudora used to have a warning option (on by default) and The Bat! simply 
appeared and handled the send as if I had requested it. (It didn't do the MAPI 
switch without my telling it to install the handler, but once I got it 
working, it worked.

I also ran fixmapi during my troubleshooting stage.

Is it possible the MAPI registration in 1.5 (with new code from Thunderbird) 
does not register it with Mozilla.exe --mail?

Comment 9

[Magnus Melin [:mkmelin]]

->WFM. If you need to specify profile you can use -p profilename (and -no-remote) as needed nowadays.

Comment 10

[Pulsebot]

Pushed by ffxbld-merge:
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/6b42872f541d
[fenix] For https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/15280: add ConstraintLayoutPerfDetector custom lint rule.
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/f2af2913c50e
[fenix] For https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/15280: add new lint rule to CODE OWNERS.
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/094a9cff0328
[fenix] For https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/15280: suppress new lint rule in migration code.
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/522e78072654
[fenix] For https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/15280: add current ConstraintLayout warnings to lint baseline.
https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-beta/rev/56db64a99105
[fenix] For https://github.com/mozilla-mobile/fenix/issues/15280 - review: add license to lint-baseline.xml.