DRAFT KB-XXXX Errors with special characters in password.properties

Symptoms

An SMTP server is set up to be used with Appian. Appian is configured for either:

1. SMTP server authentication, with conf.mailhandler.mail.smtp.auth=true in custom.properties
2. Polling an email account

When trying to authentication,the following error message is seen in mail-listener.log:

The following are both true when configured for SMTP server authentication:

1. The SMTP username conf.mailhandler.mail.user in custom.properties is correct
2. The associated password conf.password.SMTP in password.properties is correct

The following are both true when configured for polling an email account:

1. The email username conf.mailhandler.poller.EmailHandlerBean.userName in custom.properties is correct
2. The associated password conf.password.EmailHandlerBean.EMAIL_HANDLER in password.properties is correct

Cause

Special characters within Appian need to be escaped when used in the STMP password field in password.properties

Appian is aware that the character ',' needs to be escaped

Action

If it is determined a special character needs to be escaped, add the characters \\ in front of the special character

EX. conf.password.SMTP=password,withcomma

If it is unsure a special character needs to be escaped

1) Try to escape the character with \\

2) Try to use a password without special characters

If there are multiple special characters do this

Affected Versions

This article applies to all Appian versions 17.3 and newer.

Last Reviewed: November 2018