Description:
Suppressing sending of emails from Service Desk in totality can be useful, such as when building test and development systems.
It allows full construction of Contact Details, Notification functionality and full testing of the system, without adversely impacting users with spurious test messages.
However, "uninstalling" the email options in Options Manager does not suppress email sending. The reason is that the default values for the "uninstalled" options are still populated, and the mails will still send. Note that "uninstalled" does not equate to "inactive" in Service Desk Manager "Options." Instead it indicates that functionality has been restored to a "default value." In this case, Service Desk considers sending mail to be default behavior.
The solution documents is a workaround.
CA Service Management 17.X
The workaround is to use "dummy values" in the Options Manager email settings. Service Desk will still attempt to send the emails, but will not be able to reach the mail server.
Steps
Note: It is not necessary to recycle Service Desk Manager for the changed options to take effect.
Warning
Using this method will cause messages to be written to the Service Desk Manager stdlogs whenever an email notification is attempted.
This is not a fault, but a symptom of pointing to a non-existent mail server:
"ERROR hunny_mail_intf.c 1921 ThrdLogger Sess:1:0:0 Unable to connect to mail servers (d112363). Last message: Can't connect to server at d112363 Error (0)"
This message may be ignored.
Other Methods:
There are other methods to consider when suppressing email which may be more appropriate depending on situation.