Fail to send notification email with Office365 account in VMware Tanzu Application Service (TAS) for VMs

Products

• VMware Tanzu Application Service for VMs

Issue/Introduction

After setting up SMTP server configuration with an Office365 account on the "Email Notifications" setting page, the notification message when an account is created or updated sent by the TAS tile in App Manager fails.

The errors in notifications app logs look similar to the follow:

             2019-11-11T02:09:13.05+0000 [APP/PROC/WEB/0] OUT {"timestamp":"1573438153.057964563","source":"notifications","message":"notifications.crash","log_level":3,"data":{"er
ror":"server timeout","trace":"goroutine 1 [running]:\ngithub.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/vendor/github.com/pivotal-golang/lager.(*logger).Fatal(0xc420062720, 0x55ccbd
1ca040, 0x5, 0x55ccbd82db60, 0xc420011120, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)\n\t/tmp/gobuildpack.gopath527884622/.go/src/github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/vendor/github.com/pivotal-gola
ng/lager/logger.go:131 +0xcc\ngithub.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/application.Application.Crash(0xc420018068, 0x28, 0x55ccbd50c2aa, 0x1, 0x0, 0x3, 0xc420020300, 0x74, 0
xc420024013, 0xa7, ...)\n\t/tmp/gobuildpack.gopath527884622/.go/src/github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/application/application.go:193 +0xec\npanic(0x55ccbd530240, 0xc4
20011120)\n\t/tmp/contents220898695/deps/0/go1.9.7/go/src/runtime/panic.go:491 +0x287\ngithub.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/vendor/github.com/pivotal-golang/lager.(*logg
er).Fatal(0xc420062720, 0x55ccbd1d4b2a, 0x14, 0x55ccbd82db60, 0xc420011120, 0x0, 0x0, 0x0)\n\t/tmp/gobuildpack.gopath527884622/.go/src/github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notificatio
ns/vendor/github.com/pivotal-golang/lager/logger.go:152 +0x526\ngithub.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/application.Application.VerifySMTPConfiguration(0xc420018068, 0x28,
0x55ccbd50c2aa, 0x1, 0x0, 0x3, 0xc420020300, 0x74, 0xc420024013, 0xa7, ...)\n\t/tmp/gobuildpack.gopath527884622/.go/src/github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/application/
application.go:90 +0x508\ngithub.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/application.Application.Run(0xc420018068, 0x28, 0x55ccbd50c2aa, 0x1, 0x0, 0x3, 0xc420020300, 0x74, 0xc4200
24013, 0xa7, ...)\n\t/tmp/gobuildpack.gopath527884622/.go/src/github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/application/application.go:60 +0x57\nmain.main()\n\t/tmp/gobuildpack.g
opath527884622/.go/src/github.com/cloudfoundry-incubator/notifications/main.go:19 +0x1eb\n"}}
             2019-11-11T02:09:13.06+0000 [APP/PROC/WEB/0] ERR panic: server timeout [recovered]
             2019-11-11T02:09:13.06+0000 [APP/PROC/WEB/0] ERR panic: server timeout

Environment

Product Version: 2.4

Resolution

The system notifications app, which is used to send out emails, is written with the standard Go SMTP library. However, this library does not support Login Auth mechanism which is adopted by Office365 Outlook SMTP. There is a plan for the product team to support Login Auth mechanism in future, however no ETA yet when it will be ready. 

Workaround

At this time it's suggested not to configure Office365 SMTP server in TAS tile and use some other SMTP server (e.g. GMail) instead.

This also applies to other products or applications using the standard Go SMTP library. For example, the Event Alerts service tile.