MS Exchang email notification via Linux command line
Having account on MS Exchange with only MS Outlook Web Access is fine if your are instantly connected via web browser. However, imediatelly you close the web browser window you are out of emails. You could setup email forwarding which is fine until the policy prohibits external recipients. Mobile access is also option until the police force you to put your device under company mobile device management. I found the solution which fit to my case - just to get simple notification "There is new email in your inbox. Plase connect to check it out" via another email account outside of MS Exchange.
Installing required packages
Install required system packages. Here are packages for Debian, if you have any another distro you have to find on your own corresponding packages
apt install libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev python3-wheel python3-dev libssl-dev build-essential libffi-dev
Dedicated user and user environment preparation
MS Exchange account details are stored in dedicated config file in plaintext. I rather created dedicated user with locked login nevertheless it's not mandatory. You can skip it if you wish.
adduser emailnotify
passwd -l emailnotify
su - emailnotify
Install Python virtual environment and external library dependencies
mkdir office365-notifier
cd office365-notifier
python3 -m venv office365_venv
source office365_env/bin/activate
pip3 install sh exchangelib
Scripts - just copy&paste it to the office365-notifier dir
Notification notify.py script
#!/usr/bin/env python3
import config
import smtplib
from email.message import EmailMessage
from exchangelib import Account, Configuration, Credentials, DELEGATE
def connect(server, email, username, password):
'''
Create Exchange account connection
Parameters:
server - Exchange server address
email - email address
username - username for authentication - not always same as email
password - password used for authentication
Return:
account - object representing the connection
'''
creds = Credentials(username = username, password = password)
config = Configuration(server = server, credentials = creds)
return Account(primary_smtp_address = email, autodiscover = False, config = config, access_type = DELEGATE)
def main():
'''
Main body
Parameters: none
Return: none
'''
account = connect(config.server, config.email, config.username, config.password)
if account.inbox.unread_count > 0:
msg_email_word = "emails"
if account.inbox.unread_count == 1:
msg_email_word = "email"
content = "You have new " + msg_email_word + " in your " + config.email + " mailbox\n\n"
for item in account.inbox.filter(is_read = False).only('sender', 'subject'):
content = content + "Sender: " + str(item.sender.email_address) + ", Subject: " + str(item.subject) + "\n"
msg = EmailMessage()
msg.set_content(content)
msg["Subject"] = "Notification: " + str(account.inbox.unread_count) + " unread " + msg_email_word + " on " + config.email
msg["From"] = config.sender
msg["To"] = config.recipient
server = smtplib.SMTP(config.smtp_server)
server.send_message(msg)
server.quit()
if __name__ == "__main__":
main()
Config file config.py stores details about the MS Exchange account and the recipient who should receive the notification.
# MS Echange server address without HTTPS
server = "exchange.example.com"
# Your email address on the MS Exchange server
email = "joe@example.com"
# Username on the MS Exchange server
username = "example\joe"
# Password on the MS Exchange server
password = "passw0rd"
# SMTP server used for the sending notification
smtp_server = "localhost"
# SMTP server sender/recipient
sender = "joe@myserver.com"
recipient = "notify@myserver.com"
Scheduling
Right now, I'm fine to receive double notifications. Maybe in the future I will update script to suppress sending notification for same unread email.
notify.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash
DIR=/home/emailnotify/office365-notifier
cd $DIR
source ./office365_venv/bin/activate
./notify.py
And put the record into the crontab
1 8,12,16 * * * /home/emailnotify/office365-notifier/notify.sh