The Alert Email submenu lets you configure the FortiMail unit to notify selected users (including administrators) by email when specific types of events occur and are logged. For example, if you require notification about virus detections, you can have the FortiMail unit send an alert email message whenever the FortiMail unit detects a virus.

To set up alerts, you must configure both the alert email recipients (see “Configuring alert recipients”) and which event categories will trigger an alert email message (see “Configuring alert categories”).

Alert email messages also require that you supply the FortiMail unit with the IP address of at least one DNS server. The FortiMail unit uses the domain name of the SMTP server to send alert email messages. To resolve this domain name into an IP address, the FortiMail unit must be able to query a DNS server. For information on DNS, see “Configuring DNS”.