Configuring a Server for Outgoing Mail

Configuring your Confluence server to send email messages allows your Confluence users to:

You can personalize email notifications by configuring the 'From' field to include the name and email address of the Confluence user who made the change.

You need System Administrator permissions in order to configure Confluence's email server settings.

Configuring Confluence to send email messages

To configure Confluence to send outgoing mail:

  1. Go to Administration  > General Configuration > Mail Servers. This will list all currently configured SMTP servers.
  2. Click Add New SMTP Server (or edit an existing server).
  3. Edit the following fields as required:
    • Name: By default, this is simply 'SMTP Server'.
    • From Address: Enter the email address that will be displayed in the 'from' field for email messages originating from this server.
      This field is mandatory. This must be an ordinary email address, you can't enter variables in this field. 
    • From Name: Enter the name that will be displayed in the 'from' field for email messages originating from this server. This is the text which appears before the user's registered email address (in square brackets).
      This field accepts the following variables, which reference specific details defined in the relevant Confluence user's profile:

      Variable

      Description

      ${fullname}

      The user's full name.

      ${email}

      The user's email address.

      ${email.hostname}

      The domain/host name component of the user's email address.

      The default is '${fullname} (Confluence)'.
      Hence, if Joe Bloggs made a change to a page he was watching and the Confluence site's 'From Address' was set to confluence-administrator@example-company.com, then the 'From' field in his email notification would be: Joe Bloggs (Confluence) <confluence-administrator@example-company.com>.

    • Subject Prefix: Enter some text to appear at the beginning of the subject line.
  4. Enter your Hostname, Port, User name and Password details.
    If your SMTP host uses the Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol select Use TLS
      OR
    Specify the JNDI location of a mail session configured in your application server. For more information on how to set up a JNDI mail session, see Setting Up a Mail Session for the Confluence Distribution.

Testing the email settings

A Confluence administrator can test the email server as follows:

  1. Set up a mail server as described above.
  2. Click Send Test Email to check that the server is working. Check that you get the test email in your inbox.
  3. You can flush the email queue to send the email message immediately. Go to Mail Queue, and click Flush Mail Queue. See The Mail Queue.

A user can test that notifications are working as follows:

  1. Go to your user profile (using the Settings link) and edit your email preferences. See Email Notifications.
  2. Enable Notify On My Actions. (By default, Confluence does not send you notifications for your own changes.)
  3. Go to a page you wish to get notifications about.
  4. Choose Watch at the top-right of the page. See Watch Pages, Spaces and Blogs.
  5. Edit the page, make a change, and save the page.
  6. Check your email inbox. You may need to wait a while for the email message to arrive.
Last modified on May 22, 2023

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