Integrate SMTP by Connect with Amazon SQS

The purpose of this article is to introduce you to the concept of using a third party SMTP service to increase the performance of your email deliveries, and how that same service can be integrated into an Amazon SQS based workflow. This will allow us to set up a system that will automatically process incoming emails through an Amazon SQS queue and then process those emails accordingly in an asynchronous manner. We will use Amazon SQS to receive our emails, and then integrate it with the SendGrid webhooks API to automate the delivery process.

The primary application we will be integrating with is SendGrid, but the integration techniques we use here can be applied to any third party application that supports webhooks.

For our third party SMTP provider, we will use SendGrid. SendGrid offers an API that allows us to integrate their services into our own applications, including their “Message Delivery API”, which allows for processing outgoing email as well as incoming email. In addition to the Message Delivery API, SendGrid also offers a webhooks API, which allows for triggering webhooks based on actions occurring within their various systems. As an example, when an email is received by SendGrid from one of your IP addressses, they will call a “receive” webhook that you have configured in order to process that message.

For more information on SendGrid’s services, including the Message Delivery API and Webhooks API, please visit their website at http://www.sendgrid.com/docs/api/.

The first step we need to take before integrating SendGrid into our workflow is to set up a SendGrid account and create an API key. Please note that SendGrid offers both a free plan and paid plans with additional features, which are not required for our workflow.

Once you have created your account and an API key, we can configure our new SMTP by Connect instance to use that API key as well as our SendGrid account in order for it to send emails on our behalf. The first thing we need to do is get the SMTP credentials from our existing email infrastructure so that we can add them to our new Connect instance. The SMTP credentials should include the fplowing:

username. [email protected]

password. password1 (or whatever your password was)

Once we have those credentials, we need to configure the SMTP credentials on our Connect instance. To do this, log into your Connect instance via SSH and run the fplowing commands:

# cd /usr/local/connect/etc/config # vi sendgrid-smtp-config.xml

At this point you should already have the email address and password you want to use for sending emails through this Connect instance. If not, fill out those fields now. Once you have filled out those fields, save and close sendgrid-smtp-config.xml . Once saved, restart Connect so that the changes take effect:

# /usr/local/connect/bin/connect stop # /usr/local/connect/bin/connect start

Now that Connect is configured to use SendGrid, let’s go ahead and test this out by sending an email through our Connect instance. To do this, open up a terminal window on your Mac and run the fplowing command:

# echo "This is my test message" | mail -s "test" [email protected] < /devull

If everything worked correctly, you should see an email appear in your inbox with your testing message included as its content. You should also see a SENT MAIL record in your Connect logs:

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