In this support discussion, totte seeks to enable incoming email for the automatic “staff” group in Discourse to allow non-registered users to contact staff via email, similar to a shared inbox. However, Discourse does not allow custom incoming email addresses for automatic groups like staff, admins, or moderators. codinghorror explains this is intentional to maintain clarity: automatic groups may include members not intended to handle support (e.g., external admins for troubleshooting). Instead, Discourse uses a manually curated group called “team” for this purpose link. totte acknowledges the reasoning, agreeing that explicit group curation is better for handling incoming emails from users who can’t sign up. Later, Anatolia asks how to configure such a support group (like “team”) to receive and reply to emails within Discourse. pfaffman directs them to a guide on starting topics via email: Start a New Topic via Email. The consensus is to create a custom, manually managed group (e.g., “team” or “support”) and assign it an incoming email address, rather than relying on automatic groups like “staff”.
I’d like for people to be able to reach the staff group of my Discourse installation via e-mail without the need to sign up first. A helpdesk solution seems a bit excessive, but a shared inbox in the way that group messages work should be just enough. However, the option to set a custom incoming e-mail address is only available for custom groups, not the automatic ones. When searching here on meta for “staff incoming e-mail address” the only result is this:
Is there a reason for as to why this option is omitted for the staff, admins, and moderators automatic groups?
Are you saying that the automatic groups are not intended to be used in this manner? I suppose I could make do with creating a group named “staff2” or the like and use that, but I expected there to be another solution for this use case, given this topic:
I understand the reasoning to be that since the group “staff” is managed automatically, and there is the possibility that I might grant moderator or administrator access to someone outside my corresponding “team” e.g. for the sake of troubleshooting, and this individual would not be obligated nor interested in resolving issues on our behalf (and rightfully so) regarding new users trying to sign up, but still retain access - it is better to be explicit than implicit, and create a specific, manually curated group of staff members that are able and willing to handle incoming e-mails (received as group messages) from (staged) users who are unable to sign up or for any other reason require contact by e-mail outside Discourse on their side but still inside Discourse on the staff side.