EBS -- Workflow Mailer -- Validation Error Occured & Wrong Header on outbound e-mails / some "Apps DBA gymnastics" :)

We are approaching the end of the week and even the month. I 'm having busy days with the critical migration and upgrade projects, and that's why having hard time getting here.. but! the month is not over without an EBS post :)

Okay! It is time to do some Apps DBA gymnastics :)  Wf mailer is today's subject!

-- If you want to read some advanced stuff about the wf mailer, you can also read the following blog posts;

https://ermanarslan.blogspot.com/2014/09/ebs-r12-notification-mailer.html

https://ermanarslan.blogspot.com/2016/09/ebs-r12-after-disabling-ssl-on-apps.html

https://ermanarslan.blogspot.com/2020/12/ebs-r12-workflow-mailer-ora-00054-due.html

https://ermanarslan.blogspot.com/2014/08/ebs-workflow-notification-mailer.html

Okay. Today, 2 different issues on the same subject, the workflow notification mailer.

The first one is, the unexpected "Validation Error Occured". Always expect the unexpected! :) 

The SMTP server IP adress was correct. Apps node could connect to the SMTP server and we tested reaching the port with telnet. We even used SMTP command to send an email through linux command line ..There was no auth required, so we had relay. But! no matter what we did , the same error was encountered.. There were no reasons. This was a new EBS 12.1.3 clone and it was obvious that this workflow mailer configuration screen could not manage it! :)

The solution was updating the workflow mailer configuration using @afsvcpup.sql from backend..

$ cd $FND_TOP/sql

$ sqlplus apps/***

SQL> @afsvcpup.sql

Actually, we fixed all the inbound related incorrect configuration that was still there.. The configuration of the source env was still there in the config tables. Unfortuneatly, OAM - WF mailer configuration page (System Administrator > Oracle Application Manager > Workfow > Notification Mailers > Edit ) was still trying to validate them.. 

We updated a bunch of configuration parameters and then retried the same action in the same configuration page.. This time (as expected), we could configure the outbound..

Note that, we didn't have inbound for this clone env but the config was still there! We didn't have SSL  config for the mailer either, but we had SSL there.. So the config was copied from the source as is and that's was the cause.. 

Just updated the following problematic ( incorrect for the clone env) configuration parameters;

Inbound SSL Enabled

Inbound Server Name

Inbound Thread Count

Outbound Server Name

SSL Trust store

Inbound Server Name

The second issue was a peace of cake :) but still want to share it with you.

After configuring the mailer, we tested it and saw that, the value in the From field of the test mail was wrong, as you may expect; we still had the source config even there!

We updated the value of the From field through the advanced config page of the workflow mailer and the issue dissapeared.

 System Administrator > Oracle Application Manager > Workfow > Notification Mailers > Edit > Advanced > step 4 of 8

Well. That 's it.. Don't tell me "these are not interesting", remember I already wrote in the beginning -> 

I m writing this post for doing some Apps DBA  gymnastics  :) and they are real life cases :)

Note that, I'm thinking about writing a patch for these 2 issues. If I have find some time and space :), I may write a custom patch for it.. We 'll see.. A successful clone shouldn't copy the workflow mailer configuration from source to target as is (without changing anything).