Identifying your "Outgoing Mail Server"

You can email memos, schedules and summaries directly to your scheduled providers from EPSKED, the emergency physician scheduling program.

In order to do this, EPSKED needs to know the name of your Outgoing Mail Server, the computer used by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to send your email. Without knowing and entering the correct Outgoing Mail Server name, you cannot send an e-mail from EPSKED.

You may be able to determine your outgoing SMTP mail server if you:

  • Check the setup in your e-mail program (usable only if your email program is not web-based).
  • Contact your ISP (Internet Service Provider) and ask.
If those two resources are unsuccessulf or unavailable, you may be able to use our "lookup" service to find the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP Server) for your email account:
  1. In the text box below, type the "domain name" part of your email address -- the part after the @ sign. (For example, if your email account is MarkGreeneMD@earthlink.net you would enter earthlink.net .)
  2. Click the Lookup! button below the text box
  3. A popup page will be displayed, titled "Here are the results of your search".

If the results show:

  • An error message reporting that the "requested host could not be found", then you need to go back to step 1 above and correctly reenter your domain name.
  • At least one server name, then enter any one of the names in EPSKED using the instruction in the the Once you know the name of your Outgoing Mail Server section below. The displayed name can be copied and pasted from the search result window.
Some notes that may apply to you:
  • The suggested outgoing mail server returned above does not always work; however, it does quickly provide a good "best guess", and will work correctly for most EPSKED users.
  • Most web based e-mail services do not provide access to their SMTP server and these will most likely not work with EPSKED.

Once you know the name of your Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP server), you can enter the name in EPSKED by:

  1. From the scheduling program Main Menu, select the Options...Email dropdown menu. EPSKED will display the EPSKED Email Manager Information window.
  2. In the "Server:" entry area of the "Mail server setup" section in the upper left of that window, enter the name of your Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP server).
  3. If your Outgoing Mail Server requires "authentication", check the Required checkbox, and enter the user name (also known as your account name or login name) and password associated with your email account. The user name is usually the part of your email address before the '@' sign. (If you are not sure if authentication is required, leave the box unchecked and continue with these instructions. If authentication is required, EPSKED will usually be able to advise you of this when a test email does not send correctly.)
  4. Click the "Send test email" button to send yourself an email. If you have not yet entered your own email address, you will be prompted to do so before the test email is sent.
  5. If the test email sent by EPSKED is received in your email program, you have successfully configured EPSKED to send email messages.
If you experience any difficulties, this is almost always a problem with either the SMTP server name, the port selection, or with the authentication protocol used by your server. The exact cause can usually be identified if you send ByteBloc Software a copy of the communications between EPSKED and your Outgoing Mail Server, as described in these instructions:
  1. Start EPSKED.
  2. At the scheduling program Main Menu, press <Ctrl+F12>. A new "Debug" dropdown menu should appear at the top of the screen.
  3. Click the Debug dropdown menu and select the "On" option.
  4. Click the Options...Email dropdown menu to display the EPSKED Email Manager Information screen, delete the pending emails, then click the "Send test email" button
  5. After EPSKED Email Manager has completed running, click the Debug dropdown menu and select the View option, then select the "SMTP Debug log" option. If you are still having trouble, what is the last message before the problem occurs? This information will help localize the error.
  6. Click the Debug dropdown menu and select the Email-to-ByteBloc option, then select the "SMTP Debug log" option to send us a copy of the SMTP Debug log. (The Email-to-ByteBloc option can use your email program; the option should work even if you don't have email access through the EPSKED Email Manager. Alternatively, you can copy and paste a copy of the text viewed in step 5 above into an email to support@bytebloc.com).
This procedure should let us know exactly what is happening with your system and hopefully produce a solution to the problem.

If you feel sure you have the correct Outgoing Mail Server entered and EPSKED is still unable to send an email, reporting an "unable to connect" error or "WinSock Status: Socket encountered an error", you can use the following procedure to determine whether the problem is with your system or with EPSKED. These instructions are for Windows XP but other operating systems should be similar:

1) Click the Windows Start button, then select the Run... option.

2) In the textbox in the Run window that appears, type "telnet" (without quotes) in the box, then click the OK button.

3) In the Telnet window that appears, type:
  open [smtp server name] [port number]

For example, to check a connection to the
  smtp.mail.yahoo.com
server you would type:
  open smtp.mail.yahoo.com 25

4) Press the Enter key on your keyboard.

5) Read the resultant message.
a. An error message indicates that sending mail is not functioning properly on your system. You will likely need to have your IT people get involved to resolve that problem.
b. A message that starts with the number 220 (something that looks like: "220 yourmailserver.yourdomain ESMTP...) means that your mail service connection is operational, and EPSKED is having problems communicating with your system for some reason. Please recontact technical support by email at support@bytebloc.com for assistance if this is the case, and include the information from step 6 below.

6) You can send a copy of the entire session transcript by right-clicking the top of the telnet window, then selecting "Edit...Select All" from the dropdown menu:

then press the Enter key on your keyboard to copy the highlighted text. Next, in your normal email program, right click in the text area and select the Paste option and send to support@bytebloc.com

7) Type the letter "q" and press the Enter key on your keyboard to close the mail server and end the Telnet session without the necessity of a timeout, then close the Telnet window.