Email Monitoring with Mailive

Notification has the occasional hiccup with email. Usually, it's an upstream problem. Maybe the SMTP mail router is down, or there's a network problem. Sometimes there's an actual problem, like the one where Oracle Enterprise Manager sends non-compliant email which chokes JavaMail. Sometimes it's just that someone wants the warm and fuzzies, but the logs don't give it to them.

Mailive is an email monitoring system, similar to Gomez or AlertSite. But, it goes a bit deeper. Instead of just hitting the site and expecting a positive response, Mailive sends and email and expects a response.

You can set this up with Reliable Response Notification like so:

• Create a new user for Mailive.
• Add an email device which sends to mailive@knowledgefront.com
• Find the Mailive user's email address. You can find this in the "Send a New Notification" screen. Search for a user, then click the blue arrow to find the email.
• Give this email to Mailive.

You should be good to go. This will provide a full monitor; everything from MX records to network connectivity to Notification's POP or SMTP service, to the core Notification engine.

QuickBase Sync in Progress - Google Contacts, Google Calendar and QuickBooks Sync

I'm working on a new product. It's a SaaS application which connects your QuickBase CRM and Project Management tools to external data sources. My first project is Google Contacts. I actually have that running, and a good first stab at Google Calendar. I'm working on the web frontend now. After that is Chargify integration.

If anyone is interested in synchronizing your QuickBase database to Google Contacts or Google Calendar, let me know.

After I have these up and running, my next task will be QuickBooks. There have been a lot of attempts to do QuickBooks->QuickBase integration. There have been some successes, but nothing cheap and/or easy. My plan is to provide a very basic, good enough for 80% of use cases, integration. Let me know if you want to participate in feature requirements.