Configuring incoming email monitoring

With incoming email monitoring, you support posting replies to discussions via email. The application retrieves email that lands in a mailbox you specify and uses the email's contents to post a discussion reply.

Fastpath: Admin Console > System > Settings > Email Server, then Incoming

How it works

To be posted with this feature, replies must be emails that are replies to notification email. Although sent as text in email, the reply content appears in the community as if the recipient had posted it with a web browser. This way, users can post when they're unable to log in to the community but are able to read content through their notifications.

Notification emails sent from the application include a token in the subject line. The token is needed for the application to correlate the incoming email with its reply thread. Users should take care not to alter the token.

Here's how it works.

  1. Someone posts a discussion message (either a new thread or a reply to an existing one).
  2. The community sends email notifications to those people who have requested them.
  3. After reading the content of the post in the notification email, someone replies to the notification email with their response (taking care not to delete the token in the subject line).
  4. The email is received by the host described in the incoming email monitor settings.
  5. Watching for email received at that location, the application locates the discussion thread to which the reply belongs and posts the reply to the community.

Note that this feature supports only discussion replies — posts of new content and replies to other kinds of content aren't supported. To support those features, use the advanced incoming email feature. For more information, see Configuring advanced incoming email monitoring.

Note: This feature isn't supported when the notification reply is a digitally signed email.

Configuring to receive email

When you configure this feature, start with settings for your incoming email server.

Select Enable Incoming Email Monitoring to turn on the reply-by-email feature for discussions.

  1. In the Admin Console, go to System > Settings > Email Server, then select the Incoming tab.
  2. Specify the parameters for the email monitoring feature as follows:
    Setting Description
    Client Protocol Protocol (POP3 or IMAP) that clients use to retrieve email from your mail server.
    Mail Server Host Host name, such as imap.example.com.
    Mail Server Port Port number that clients use to reach your server.
    Email Account to Monitor The email account on the incoming mail server that the application should watch for content. For example, monitored_account@mail.yourdomain.com. This email address also serves as the reply-to address if the content is sent out from Jive.
    Account Username Email account user name.
    Account Password (Optional) Account password if the server requires one from clients.
    Use SSL The check box that indicates if the server encrypts the connection between the web nodes and the SMTP server with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL).
    Mail Folder Name The server-side folder name (if any) that email lands in when it is received if the client protocol is IMAP.
    Delete Unrecognized Email Messages The check box that indicates if messages that aren't intended for the application should be removed.
    Inbox Check Frequency The frequency with which the server checks for new email. You should set this to a value that makes sense for your community. For very active communities (particularly when many people author by email), you might want this to be a lower number so that the application is more responsive with emailed posts.
  3. Select the Enable Incoming Email Monitoring check box to enable the email monitoring feature.
  4. Click Save Changes.