One of the wonderful things about gmail is that it's free. The worst part of it is trying to get Microsoft software to work nicely with it. SharePoint 2010 and Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS) are both prime examples of how difficult it can be. Luckily for us, there's a fantastic workaround that will enable us to use gmail with SharePoint and TFS 2010... at least for out-bound mail.

A gem of an application call E-MailRelay (http://emailrelay.sourceforge.net/) enables you to quickly setup an SMTP server who's only purpose is to forward the requests on to your gmail account. Once downloaded, follow the GUI application to setup your SMTP server.

Once you're done that, hop into your SharePoint 2010 Administration Console -> Central Administration -> System Settings -> Configure Outgoing e-mail settings.  Update your email settings to point to your newly created SMTP server.  In my case, I installed the E-MailRelay application locally so I would simply set the Outbound SMTP server to my local ip address.

That's it!... you're done.  Test your email by signing up for alerts in SharePoint.  Remember, it may take 5 minutes for the email to be sent out by the SharePoint Timer Service.