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

Some special characters within password.properties need to be escaped when used in:

1. The STMP password field, conf.password.SMTP
2. The email user password field, conf.password.EmailHandlerBean.EMAIL_HANDLER

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. Change the password to remove the special character in question.
2. If authentication is successful without the special character, re-add the special character and escape it with \\.

Affected Versions

This article applies to all Appian versions 17.2 and newer.

Last Reviewed: November 2018