The Java Mail tool in Virtual Shopfloor can be used to email your reports directly to a given email address within the software.

To set up this feature, go to File > Preferences, and down to email settings – where you will see the window below:


The first step is to change the drop down menu at the top to email using Java Mail, allowing the emails to be sent directly by the software.

The next box is where you can set the ‘reply-to’ email address, which is what the recipient will see as the sender of the email. This will usually be just your standard email address.

Moving down in to the Java Mail settings, the next box is the host name of the outgoing email server. This may look something like mail.uk2.net or mail.gmail.net for example.

The outgoing server user name is just your standard email address in most cases, but this is not strictly the case.

The password will be unique to your email server settings, and is not necessarily the personal password you use to log in to outlook/gmail/exchange for example.

You can find all this information by going to your control panel, navigating to User Settings > Mail > Email Accounts as in the image below:

After clicking email accounts, find your email account, and click change. This will then display the window below, where you can find the appropriate outgoing server information.

The outgoing mail server, user name and password (if applicable – some outgoing servers are open access), are the user name and password you’ll need to put into the Java Mail settings, like in the image below:

You then have the option of including a CC and/or BCC email address, as well as adding text to the email body. However, please note this is a global change (for all jobs).

Once you’ve made the changes outlined above, be sure to save the changes to the email settings when prompted by the software when closing the preferences window.

Make sure you have entered a valid email address in the client address tab within the order details section – this is the email address the report will be sent to.

In order to send the email report, go to the report sets tab once you’ve finalised your job and create the report(s). Highlight the report you want to email by clicking on it, and click email at the bottom of the window. VS will then send the report by Java Mail to the email address you entered.

If you can’t find your outgoing server name/password:

In some cases this information can be locked by an external party such as an IT company which manages your email system. In this case you’ll need to contact them to provide the outgoing server name, username or password.