Set up reply via email support

So you’d like to set up reply via email support for your Discourse forum.

Good news! Unlike outgoing email, which is completely unsuitable for typical consumer mail services like GMail, Outlook, Yahoo Mail, etc, incoming reply via-email tends to be extremely low volume. Unless you have a truly massive forum with a zillion people replying to notification emails, you are probably safe using, say, Gmail.

So here’s how to set it up using GMail as an example.

1. Create a new GMail account. Assign it a username like [email protected] or in my case, [email protected]. Give it a strong password.

2. Log in to this account via http://mail.google.com. Accept the terms of service, enter the CAPTCHA, load the default web interface. Maybe send a test email, receive a test email. Kick the tires.

3. POP3s access is off by default in Gmail, so turn it on via Settings, Forwarding and POP/IMAP:

   

   All incoming emails will be retained by default – but you can tweak as needed.

4. Visit the Discourse settings and check the Email tab.

5. Change the following settings:

   • reply_by_email_address enter replies+%{reply_key}@example.com
   • pop3s_polling_username enter [email protected]
   • pop3s_polling_password enter the password of that email account
   • pop3s_polling_host set to pop.gmail.com
   • pop3s_polling_enabled set to true
   • reply_by_email_enabled set to true

There is a certain amount of polling that goes on for this account, but we’ve set it to a low, safe volume – you can configure the polling intervial via the pop3 polling period setting.

We do assume that your email service supports plus addressing aka address tags, so check that before starting. GMail obviously does.

If everything is working, you should see the footer of all notification mails now tell you that you can reply either by visiting the website, or replying via email:

To respond, reply to this email or visit {topic URL} in your browser.

If things aren’t working, check the /logs path on your Discourse in your web browser and look for email related error messages.

Note: we have seen difficulties when signing up for a GMail account from a different country than your server is located in. For example, if you create the Gmail account from the UK, but the server is in the USA.

Source: https://meta.discourse.org/t/set-up-reply-via-email-support/14003