Antelao relays outgoing mail through a Postfix container configured as a smart host. The container is installed only when an SMTP profile exists; skipping SMTP during setup leaves it out, and server installation still succeeds with a warning.
Configuring
The SMTP profile is part of the server's policy configuration: host, port, credentials, the sender address and where notifications go. The installer offers to set it up (an SMTP host is one of its optional questions), and the E-mail tab of Configuration is where it is edited afterwards.
The page's send test message action is the fastest check that credentials and the relay actually work.
The relay hands mail to the SMTP host only over an encrypted connection (TLS 1.2 or later), so the credentials and the messages never cross the network in clear. An SMTP host that offers no encryption refuses every message until Allow unencrypted relay is switched on in the profile. Switch it on only for a mail server on your own network that cannot do TLS: the relay still encrypts whenever the host offers it, but no longer insists.
What Antelao sends
| When | |
|---|---|
| Test message | When you ask for one |
| Backup notifications | After every instance backup, by hand or on a schedule, to the recipients on its Backup tab |
| Restore notifications | After a restore of an instance or a database, to the recipients on its Restore tab |
| Security notifications | On sign-in events worth telling someone about |
| Fail2Ban notifications | When an address is banned, to the recipients on the Threat protection page, or to the profile's own notification recipients when none are set there |
| License expiry warning | Daily while the license is inside its warning window |
Outgoing mail covers the relay and the test message, and is carried by Community, Professional and Provider - not by the Developer edition. Each notification is a capability of its own on top of it: Backup and restore reports, Security notices and Attack blocking notices are Professional capabilities. Without one, that mail is skipped and the others still go. The license expiry warning travels the same way as the security notification, so it needs Security notices too; below Professional it is still raised as an alert event and shows on the console's bell.
The security notification never blocks a sign-in
The reason is narrow and worth stating: that mail is sent on the sign-in path. If a license problem made it throw, it would stop people signing in. A missing notification is a much smaller harm than a console nobody can enter, so this one is skipped silently instead of refusing, and the sign-in itself always goes ahead.
The license expiry warning
Sent daily while the license is inside its warning window, which is the license warning window under Configuration, defaulting to 30 days. Set it to 0 to turn the warning off.
Point the notification recipients at somewhere a human actually reads. A subscription that ends runs unregistered, which switches off backups and outgoing mail with them, and this warning, sent while there is still time, is the thing standing between you and finding that out a month later. See When the license changes.
Odoo's own mail is separate
This is Antelao's mail, not your instances'. Each Odoo database has its own outgoing mail servers configured inside Odoo, and those are not managed here.