Using the Powershell to Send Email Messages (Send-MailMessage)

With Exchange 2007 SP2 you can send emails from within powershell! To avoid authentication issues, your default receive connector must allow anonymous users to connect. This is normally required when you allow connections to your exchange server from the Internet. You can do this from the shell:

To determine your connector name:

[PS] Get-ReceiveConnector

This will provide the following output (EX1 being the name of my exchange server)

Identity Bindings Enabled

-------- -------- -------
EX1\Default EX1 {:::25, 0.0.0.0:25} True

EX1\Client EX1 {:::587, 0.0.0.0:587} True
 
Now you can determine the current permissions set on the Default connector:
 
[PS] Get-ReceiveConnector "EX1\Default EX1" ft name,perm* -au
 
This will provide the current permissions set on the connector. If the connector has not been configured to receive mail from the Internet, then you will most likely NOT see "Anonymous" listed. This will need to be included. You can do this as follows:
 
[PS] Get-ReceiveConnector "EX1\Default EX1" |Set-ReceiveConnector -PermissionGroups AnonymousUsers, ExchangeUsers, ExchangeServers, ExchangeLegacyServers
 
Once this is done, you can send email from the powershell. Here's an example where the administrator (user currently running powershell) sends an email to a recipient (usermailbox) called ben:
 
[PS] Send-MailMessage -From administrator@compulinx.local -To ben@compulinx.local -Subject "Test Email" -Body "Hi Ben ...Just a test" -SmtpServer ex1.compulinx.local