Incoming Mail Connections
To use mail handlers and process your incoming emails to create or modify issues, incoming Mail Accounts have to be configured first.
Due to security reasons, the Email This Issue add-on cannot access the mail servers in Jira itself, so mail accounts should be configured within Email This Issue's Administration interface.
1. Go to the Administration configuration tab, and choose Incoming Mail Connections under the INCOMING MAILS menu item.
2. To create a new Incoming Mail Connection, click on Add.
Incoming Mail Connections are always added in a disabled state. After editing an enabled Incoming Mail Connection its state will change back to disabled. You need to enable them before they can be used.
Incoming Mail Connections dialog - generic settings
Name - enter the preferred name to identify the connection
Description (optional) - short description to help identify the connection
Connection Mode - depending on what you select here, options will vary
Folder - The folder of the mailbox you want to process emails from.
If left empty, we default to the folder named Inbox.
If your mailbox is in a different language, you do need to specify the exact name of the folder, for example: Posteingang.
To connect to a subfolder, you need to use forward slashes to specify the whole folder structure, for example: MainFolder/SubFolder.
Folder selection is not supported on a POP3 connection.
Certificates - If you would like to process encrypted emails with Email This Issue, a Certificate can be added to the Incoming Connection that will be used by the Mail Handler. One Connection can have multiple Certificates, and one Certificate can be added to multiple Connections. You can search for certificates by starting to type their name or alias into the select field search bar. They will appear with their name first and alias in parentheses. More information about using Certificates can be found in Email Security
After download - Select what should happen to emails after we download them. You can opt to have them marked as read, or to be deleted from the mail server. This action is performed only after we download the email.
Timeout - Timeout for connection attempts to the mail server in milliseconds, valid values: 1-60000 msec.
Connection Mode - specific settings
Email This Issue supports login and OAuth authentication mechanisms for Incoming Mail Connections. You can select it by selecting the correct protocol.
POP3, IMAP: log in with username and password - Custom Mail Server: Basic Authentication
Google OAuth2: OAuth for Gmail/Gsuite
Microsoft 365 IMAP (w/ OAuth2): OAuth for Microsoft account using SMTP protocol
Microsoft 365 Graph API (w/ OAuth2): OAuth for Microsoft account using Graph API
Microsoft Graph Change Notification (w/ OAuth2): When using Graph Change Notification, emails get processed faster because Microsoft sends a notification as soon as they arrive at the inbox.
Google OAuth2 connection
Create the OAuth2 credentials: Gmail with OAuth2
Select the Client Credentials you created on the credentials page.
Enter the user name of the Outgoing Mail Connection you want to use.
Click on the "Authorize" button to grant access to Email This Issue to send emails from your account.
In the dialog, select the account that belongs to the email address you use for login:
Note: If you have multiple Google accounts select the one with the email that matches the username in the Outgoing Mail Connection dialog. Emails will be sent from that account.If you get the following warning, do the following:
Click Advanced.
Click the "Go to meta-inf.hu (unsafe)" link.
Confirm your choice by clicking Allow.
Result: You can send emails in Email This Issue from Gsuite with OAuth Authentication.
If you want to revoke the access from Email This Issue to your Gmail account, you can do it by visiting Account Settings.
Microsoft Connections
Microsoft IMAP with OAuth 2.0
Set up the OAuth2 credentials: Microsoft IMAP and SMTP with OAuth2
Enter the Username you would like to authenticate with.
Click Authorize
You will be redirected to the Microsoft login page, where you will be logged in automatically if you have SSO enabled. If the Username is not the same as the one you have an active session with, you will need to log in to Microsoft with the username before Authorizing - this way you should be able to choose the correct account to complete the Authorization process with.
Microsoft IMAP with OAuth2 Host Settings
For IMAP connections, the hostname outlook.office365.com is used by default, when connecting to the mail server. However, in certain scenarios, the use of a custom hostname might be required. In such cases, there is a possibility to override the default value. Enable the respective Override default host setting toggle and select the desired host from the Host dropdown appearing below.
Microsoft Graph with OAuth2 and Microsoft Graph Change Notification with OAuth2
Set up the OAuth2 credentials: Microsoft Graph API with OAuth2, you will be able to choose between application access or delegated access.
Delegated access (OAuth2 credentials were created with Auth Code Grant type)
Enter the Username you would like to authenticate with.
Click Authorize
You will be redirected to the Microsoft login page, where you will be logged in automatically if you have SSO enabled. If the Username is not the same as the one you have an active session with, you will need to log in to Microsoft with the username before Authorizing - this way you should be able to choose the correct account to complete the Authorization process with.
Application access (OAuth2 credentials were created with Client Credentials Grant type)
Fill out the Username field, as it is a requirement for the connection health check.
The Authorization will be checked automatically after you select the credentials; no login is necessary.
Shared mailbox settings
A shared mailbox is a mailbox that multiple users can use to read and send e-mail messages. You can read more about them here: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/collaboration/shared-mailboxes/shared-mailboxes
To use a shared mailbox you just have to enter the username and password (or use OAuth) of the account you want to log in with, then enable the "Use a shared mailbox" option and enter the alias of the shared mailbox in the field that appears:
Enabling Incoming Mail Connections
By default, all new Incoming Mail Connections are created as disabled. To enable a connection, select the "Enable" option from the connection's menu.
From the app's point of view, when initializing a new or re-activating (re-enabling) a previously used ("known") mailbox - provided that there is a matching enabled mail handler for the connection at hand - there is a good chance that a bunch of messages will be subsequently downloaded from the mailbox and processed by the app (by creating or updating issues).
Depending on the contents and the current state of the mailbox, such an action might entail some risks though:
lots of emails might be processed inadvertently (which may take a while, while also changing messages' state on the mail server by marking them as SEEN or DELETED)
under certain circumstances (depending on the mail server's and the app's settings), duplicate issues might be created
To avoid the undesired download of a large number of emails upon enabling a connection, the estimated number of 'new' messages within the target mail folder is assessed and an informational dialog is popped up if an acknowledgement is required before acting.
Searching for new messages (in progress):
If there are any new messages to download, the following text is displayed:
Clicking on the Enable button will change the connection's state and trigger other processes as indicated by the appearing flag:
Depending on the selected connection mode (and the underlying protocol) about the mailbox's current state, the exact number of 'new' messages (from the app's point of view) might not be possible to be determined within a reasonable amount of time. Consequently, the accuracy and confidence level of this estimation might vary in different use cases and situations.
The displayed message count may be affected by several factors, including but not restricted to the following:
whether it is a "brand new" or an "already known" mailbox for the app
the total number of (unread or all) messages within the mailbox
the number/ratio of known and new messages (stored message UIDs)
the number of already processed, but “manually reset” messages (being set unread again)
various mail server settings (session-level restrictions)
Moreover, it is also hard to verify the outcome in graphical email clients (Gmail/Outlook/etc. browser/app), as they may still keep track of read and deleted messages differently by hiding some details from the end user.
Despite all these considerations, the estimation can be classified as pretty much exact or at least as fair and reliable in most cases.
There is one notable exception though - POP3 connections, where the "mark as read" post-download action is selected. Here, both the accuracy and the confidence level of the estimation result may be extremely low. Nevertheless, we highly discourage you from using this unfortunate option (or rather combination) in real-world (i.e. production/production-like) scenarios, as the performance of the message download will also erode over time (as facing an ever-growing mailbox, where all the messages must be considered and handled as "potentially relevant" by design).
Protocol log
In case of an unsuccessful connection in the Incoming Mail Connection, the status becomes red and a protocol log becomes available:
The Protocol Log is displayed only when the status is red (indicating a problem with the connection) and it contains information about the errors that occurred during fetching e.g. authentication failed, wrong hostname etc.
Before saving the Incoming Mail Connection, please use the "Test Connection" button to check if Email This Issue is able to connect to your mailbox.
After creating Incoming Mail Connections, go to Mail Handlers to configure the actions that should be executed when processing new emails.
If you’re working on a production account that already has emails in the inbox (read or unread), remove everything you don’t want to be processed. This is needed because at the first processing round we download every email from the target folder. Later on, we only download those that have not been processed yet.
Filtering the list
The Incoming Mail Connection list can be filtered by clicking on the Search button. After clicking, a free text field will be opened, in which the search term can be entered. The filter searches in the Name, Description, Host, and Username fields.
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