CSCatchALL is a nifty Exchange Server DLL by Christensen Software, used to harvest emails sent to accounts which don’t really exist on your Exchange Server. Let me explain how we rely on it for our development process.

During application testing, our team likes to create fake accounts, ex: bubba.gump@imulus.com, joe.smith@imulus.com and in most situations the testing team needs to actually receive emails at these accounts to test that the web application is working as designed. Rather then setting up individual accounts for all these fake users, CSCatchALL allows us to create a “basket” account to drop all fake addresses into. This way the testing team doesn’t clutter up their working INBOX with testing emails.

The software can also be used to setup to collect SPAM messages sent to anyone@companyname.com, thereby reducing unwanted messages.