EmailMenuOne of the new and exciting features added for ReportBuilder 21 is the ability to register and use multiple email plugins at once.

ReportBuilder has supported sending emails from within the product since version 10. This was done by registering a single Email Plugin, each of which supported a different email-sending technology. Initially it was possible to either send the email directly by connecting to a SMTP server or transfer the email (with report file attached) to the email client (Outlook) installed on the user’s machine and send from there. These plugins are called “SMTP Plugins” because they either directly or indirectly interact with the user’s SMTP server to send the message. Due to the nature of these sending techniques the restriction of only registering a single email plugin at a time was appropriate.

With the introduction of the Web Mail Plugins for version 18, it became clear that the ability to register multiple email plugins at once would be useful. This is why we decided to re-design the Email Plugin architecture for ReportBuilder 21 to make it possible.

The new feature allows multiple Web Mail plugins and a single SMTP plugin to be registered simultaneously giving the user the option to select the email service they would like to use. When multiple email plugins are registered, a handy drop-down menu is enabled making the selection process even easier. It’s also possible to select the email plugin in code using the EmailSettings.ConnectionSettings.MailService property.

Please see the following RBWiki article and demo for more information and instruction on how to utilize this new feature.

http://rbwiki.digital-metaphors.com/output/email/how-to-multiple-email-plugins/

Happy Reporting!