Synchronizing Content with Email or Newsgroups
You can create gateways through which Jive SBS will synchronize
data between a space and an email, newsgroup, or mbox data source.
Admin Console: Spaces > Settings > Gateway Settings
When you create a gateway, you specify the data source to synchronize with, along with
the space to synchronize. In other words, each gateway is a one-to-one mapping between a
space and the data source. You can either create a gateway that's automatically used for
synchronizing or you can synchronize data in either direction at need. Gateway settings
are scoped to specific spaces.
You can also choose to use a 24-hour buffer for importing. That means that, at the time
of import, the gateway pulls in all data that has come in since the last import, plus
those that came in within the 24-hour period before the last import. For example, if an
email has already been imported, it won't be imported again, but any emails that came in
late and were missed the last time the gateway ran will be imported. This redundancy
helps ensure that you get those emails that were held up at the server for some reason
and did not get delivered in a timely manner.
To create a gateway for automatic, regular importing or exporting:
- Go to the Gateway Settings page.
- Click the Add Gateway tab.
- Select whether you want an email or newsgroup gateway and choose the space
(community) with which you want to sync the external data source.
- Click Add Gateway.
- On the Add an Email Gateway page, configure basic and advanced settings as
needed. You'll find more information about these settings in the tables below.
- Click Add Gateway.
To use a gateway for one-time or at-need synchronization:
- Go to the Gateway Settings page.
- Click the Import Once or Export Once tab.
- Select a gateway corresponding to the data source you're synchronizing with
(note that you can't export to an mbox file) and choose the space (community)
with which you want to sync the external data source.
- Click Import Once or Export Once.
- Configure basic and advanced settings as needed. You'll find more information
about these settings in the tables below.
- Click Import Messages or Export Messages.
Gateway Settings
The following tables describe general settings available for gateways. You'll set
these either globally or for each new gateway you create.
Global Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| Gateway Importing |
Enables or disables the
importing feature. |
| Gateway Exporting |
Enables or disables the
exporting feature. |
| Time between imports |
The amount of time that
should pass between imports from a data source. |
| 24-hour buffer for
importing messages |
Enables or disables
buffered importing feature, which imports messages that might have
been missed from the 24-hour time period before the last
import. |
| Outgoing message footer |
The text that should
appear at the bottom of messages synced to the data source from the
space. This is a way to mark exported content with a boilerplate
message. In your footer text, you can use the tokens shown in curly
braces at the left of the message box. For example, imagine content
synced to a newsgroup from a space called "Product Suggestions".
Footer text such as "Posted from {communityName}." would be posted
in the exported message as a footer that read, "Posted from Product
Suggestions." |
New Gateway Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| Gateway Importing |
Enables or disables
message importing for the new gateway. |
| Gateway Exporting |
Enables or disables
message exporting for the new gateway. |
| 24-hour buffer for
importing messages |
Enables or disables the
buffered importing feature, which imports messages that might have
been missed from the 24-hour time period before the last
import. |
Newsgroup Gateway Settings
You can create a gateway between a space in your community and a Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) newsgroup. Using
this gateway, you can have messages transferred, or synchronized, between the
newsgroup and a specified space in your community.
When creating a newsgroup gateway, you specify newsgroup connection information, as
well as details about how outgoing and/or incoming messages should be handled.
Note: These settings are available when you're creating a gateway for regular use or
creating it for one-time (or at-need) use. The following tables summarize all of the
settings you might see, although not all settings will be available wherever you
configure a newsgroup gateway.
Newsgroup Settings. General settings that are required to connect to the newsgroup.
| Setting |
Description |
| Host |
The name of the NNTP
server host. This is often a domain, such as news.example.com, or an
IP address. |
| Newsgroup |
The newsgroup hosted by
the server with which messages will be synchronized. |
Outgoing Newsgroup Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| Default "From" address |
The address to use for
the message's source when no address is specified. This is usually
an email address. |
Advanced Newsgroup Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| NNTP server port |
The port number to use
when connecting to the NNTP server. The default is port 119; for SSL
the normal port to use is 993. |
| NNTP server username |
The username needed to
authenticate with the NNTP server. |
| NNTP server password |
The password needed to
authenticate with the NNTP server. |
| Debug |
Enables or disables
debugging for the NNTP transport layer, writing debug information to
System.out.err. Debugging shouldn't be enabled for a production
instance. |
| Allow import/export of
attachments |
Enables or disables
attachments in messages synchronized with the newsgroup. If
disabled, attachments are stripped before import or export. |
| Default character set |
The character set that
will be used to decode incoming messages that have no explicit
character set defined. |
Advanced Incoming Newsgroup Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| Enable threading via
subject line matching |
Enables or disables the
feature in which incoming messages are organized into threaded
discussions by grouping messages that have the same subject. |
| Enable email address to
user mapping |
Enables or disables the
feature in which the email address of the newsgroup message poster
is matched with a user on the system. Where a matching address is
found, the user associated with that address is shown as the author
of the imported message. If an address is not found, the user is
shown as guest. |
| Temporary parent body |
The text that should be
used when creating temporary parent messages. It's possible with
email accounts and mailing lists to get a response to a message
before getting the original message. If this happens and only the
child message is available at the time of the gateway import, the
application must still have a way to establish a correct
parent/child relationship. Therefore, a temporary fake parent
message is created using an extrapolated subject from the child, and
a body with the value you specify. You might want to create a short
message that explains the nature of the fake parent message to the
user. On subsequent imports when a real parent message is found, the
fake data will be replaced with the correct subject and
body. |
| Empty subject string |
The text to use for a
message's subject where an imported has no subject text. |
| Default character set |
The character set that
will be used to decode incoming messages that have no explicit
character set defined. |
Advanced Outgoing Newsgroup Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| Organization |
The value for the NNTP
Organization header field. This is usually short phrase that
describes the sender's organization, such as "Example Company,
Product Community". Something with the name of the space might be
useful, for example. The default is for the field to be
empty. |
| Honor user email
preference |
Choose "Yes" to honor
email privacy settings of the user who posted the exported message
(in other words, whether they want their email address
displayed). |
| Export messages after
(date) |
The earliest date from
which messages should be exported. |
| Allow messages to be
exported again |
Enables or disables
re-exporting of messages. By default, a message that has previously
been exported or imported, or which was automatically created for
threading purposes by an import gateway, is not exported again. You
can specify instead that messages should be re-exported again if
absolutely needed. This is typically not enabled, and should only be
enabled with care. |
| Update NNTP message ID
stored in Jive |
Enables or disables
updating a message's ID in the application system when the message
is exported. When this is disabled, the message ID is left unchanged
in order to prevent the message from being re-exported. This setting
has no effect unless the re-exporting is enabled using the "Allow
messages to be exported again" setting. |
Email Gateway Settings
You can create a gateway between a space in your community and an email server. Using
this gateway, you can have messages transferred, or synchronized, between the server
and a specified space in your community.
When creating an email gateway, you specify connection information as well as details
about how outgoing and/or incoming messages should be handled.
Note: These settings are available when you're creating a gateway for regular use or
creating it for one-time (or at-need) use. The following tables summarize all of the
settings you might see, although not all settings will be available wherever you
configure a newsgroup gateway.
Incoming Mail Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| Type |
The protocol that will
be used to retrieve incoming email. Note that advanced incoming mail
settings differ depending on whether you choose POP3 or IMAP. |
| Host |
The name of the email
host, such as mail.example.com |
| Username |
The username to use for
authenticating with the email server. |
| Password |
The password to use for
authenticating with the email server. |
Outgoing Mail Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| Host |
The name of the SMTP
host for outgoing email, such as mail.example.com |
| Default "From" address |
The email address to
send mail from when exporting. This is used for messages from
anonymous users or users who hide their information. |
| "Reply-To" address |
The email address that
should appear in the To line when the exported email is replied
to. |
| "To" address |
The email address that
messages will be sent to during exports. If the gateway is for a
mailing list, this would be the mailing list address (for example,
your-list@example.com). |
Advanced Incoming Mail Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| POP3 server port
IMAP server port
|
The port number that
will be used when connecting to the server. For POP3, the default is
110, the standard POP3 port number; for IMAP, the default is
143. |
| SSL |
Enables or disables
connecting to the server using an SSL encrypted connection.
Currently, if an encrypted connection cannot be made, an unencrypted
connection will be attempted. |
| Folder (IMAP only) |
The name of the root folder from which to import. By default, the
IMAP provider will use the normal 'INBOX' folder, or whatever is
specified as the default according to the IMAP server. |
| Delete messages from
server (POP3 only) |
Enables or disables
having messages deleted from the server after they've been
downloaded. |
| Allow import of
attachments |
Enables or disables
allowing attachments to be imported with their messages. |
| Enable threading via
subject line matching |
Enables or disables the
feature in which incoming messages are organized into threaded
discussions by grouping messages that have the same subject. |
| Enable email address to
user mapping |
Enables or disables the
feature in which the email address of the message sender is matched
with a user on the system. Where a matching address is found, the
user associated with that address is shown as the author of the
imported message. If an address is not found, the user is shown as
guest. |
| Temporary parent body |
The text that should be
used when creating temporary parent messages. It's possible with
email accounts and mailing lists to get a response to a message
before getting the original message. If this happens and only the
child message is available at the time of the gateway import, the
application must still have a way to establish a correct
parent/child relationship. Therefore, a temporary fake parent
message is created using an extrapolated subject from the child, and
a body with the value you specify. You might want to create a short
message that explains the nature of the fake parent message to the
user. On subsequent imports when a real parent message is found, the
fake data will be replaced with the correct subject and
body. |
| Empty subject string |
The text to use for a
message's subject where an imported has no subject text. |
| Default character set |
The character set that
will be used to decode incoming messages that have no explicit
character set defined. |
| Debug |
Enables or disables
debugging for the email transport layer, writing debug information
to System.out. Debugging shouldn't be enabled for a production
instance. |
Advancted Outgoing Mail Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| SMTP server port |
The port number to use
when connecting to the SMTP server. The default is 25, the standard
SMTP port number. |
| SSL |
Enables or disables SSL
connections to the SMTP server. Unlike most standard SSL,
connections to the SMTP server are often on the same port as
unencrypted connections (port 25). |
| Username |
The username to use
when authenticating with the server. |
| Password |
The password to use
when authenticating with the server. |
| Organization |
The name to set in the
Organization header of the outbound message. This is usually short
phrase that describes the sender's organization, such as "Example
Company, Product Community". Something with the name of the space
might be useful, for example. The default is for the field to be
empty. |
| Only use default "From"
address |
Set to "Yes" to use
only the default "From" address when sending email, ignoring user
preferences. |
| Honor user email
preference |
Set to "Yes" to honor
email privacy settings of the user who posted the exported message
(in other words, whether they want their email address
displayed). |
| Allow export of
attachments |
Enables or disables
exporting attachments with their messages. |
| Custom character set |
The character set that
will be used to encode outgoing messages. |
| Export messages after
(date) |
The earliest date from
which messages should be exported. |
| Allow messages to be
exported again |
Enables or disables
re-exporting of messages. By default, a message that has previously
been exported or imported, or which was automatically created for
threading purposes by an import gateway, is not exported again. You
can specify instead that messages should be re-exported again if
absolutely needed. This is typically not enabled, and should only be
enabled with care. |
| Update email message ID
stored in Jive |
Enables or disables
updating a message's ID in the application system when the message
is exported. When this is disabled, the message ID is left unchanged
in order to prevent the message from being re-exported. This setting
has no effect unless the re-exporting is enabled using the "Allow
messages to be exported again" setting. |
| Debug |
Enables or disables
debugging for the email transport layer, writing debug information
to System.out. Debugging shouldn't be enabled for a production
instance. |
MBox File Import Settings
You can create a gateway that imports messages into a space from an mbox file.
Import Settings
| Setting |
Description |
| File |
The path to the mbox
file whose contents will be imported. |
| Allow import of
attachments |
Enables or disables
importing attachments with their messages. |
| Enable threading via
subject line matching |
Enables or disables the
feature in which incoming messages are organized into threaded
discussions by grouping messages that have the same subject. |
| Enable email address to
user mapping |
Enable this to turn on
the feature in which the email address of the message sender is
matched with a user on the system. Where a matching address is
found, the user associated with that address is shown as the author
of the imported message. If an address is not found, the user is
shown as guest. |
| Import HTML messages |
Enables or disables
importing of HTML email. If enabled, HTML email will be imported as
the message body; otherwise it will be imported as an
attachment. |
| Reply prefixes
(comma-separated) |
The prefixes that will
be stripped from messages when attempting to find a parent message
via subject line matching. Prefixes are lowercase, with default
values including 're:' and 'aw:' |