Developing a Microsoft Provisioning System (MPS) Provider is usually a four-step process.

The MPS SDK Visual Studio Tools include the Provider Base Class 2.0 which exposes the necessary interfaces for an MPF Provider so that you can concentrate on the "action" code needed to provision the service in question. To ensure that the provider you plan to develop will do what you intend it to do, it is important to plan ahead. In this example, you will develop a provider which will allow you to send e-mail to one or more users.

The provider will need one method.

SendMail will take multiple input parameters pertaining to the task of sending e-mail.

• fromAddress-The e-mail address of the sender
• toAddress-The comma separated list of direct recipients
• ccAddress-The comma separated list of CC recipients
• subject-The subject line of the message
• attachments/attachment-A XML list of attachments to add to the message
• mailFormat-The format of the message text or HTML
• messageBody-The body of the message either HTML or plain text
• server-The server name or IP Address of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server
• serverPort-The port on the SMTP server to use
• serverUserName-Alternate credentials username
• serverPassword-Alternate credentials password

The provider will use the .NET System.Web.Mail class to construct and send the message and return the resulting message from the SMTP server to the caller.

We recommend that you create a small command line or Microsoft Windows Forms Program first that allows you to prototype and proof the functionality desired; this also allows for a rapid development cycle. Moving the prototype code to the final provider code is a very quick (almost cut-and-paste) exercise.

Use the Visual Studio Microsoft Provisioning System/MPF Provider Template to get started.

In the Solution Explorer you will see a the following files created:

• Provider.cs
• SimpleProvider.snk