Can’t set email-in for existing group?

[Architect]

Have this working with categories, but for some reason don’t see an option to set address for groups.

Not sure why that may be, must have missed something. Is there some additional configuration for this to work with groups that isn’t required for categories?

With this guide just see:

@Discourse

If you are not seeing the field, make sure that you have enabled the email_in site setting. Enter the email address you want to associate to that group and click the Save button to save your changes.

Which is the same as for the category mail-receiver have the email_in setting set.

Note (edit): There is an option to set e-mail address for when a new group is created, but cannot find setting for existing default groups to be setup for e-mail receiving.

[JammyDodger]

Are you trying to set up email-in for an automatic group? (eg. Admins). If so, that is not currently supported in the UI.

[Architect]

Yeah for one of the automatic/default groups, from the guide thought that would be possible for an “exsting group”:

@Discourse

If you are editing an existing group, click the group’s Manage tab, then click the Interaction link from the left side menu. You should see a Custom incoming email address field near the bottom of the form:

Can create a new group instead, maybe note could be added to this guide about that not being possible for the default groups.

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

You can set it for the automatic groups, but it requires access to the Rails console and some bravery:

Allow email in for moderators, staff, and admins

Well, since nobody told me that was completely stupid, I’ve gone and tested this rails command on a little used instance. And it seems to work (so far)! Use at your own risk and backup first To add an email-in address Group.where(name: "=groups.name=").update(incoming_email: "=groups.name=@=domain=") To remove an email-in address Group.where(name: "=groups.name=").update(incoming_email: NIL)

[Architect]

Good to know, don’t understand what a “Rails” console is but that is accessed through the standard console?

I don’t have a critical need for this to work, as the email-in for default categories of admin, moderators, and main/general category all works fine.

Only advantage of using groups instead of categories is emails will post as a PM instead of topic.

Would guess there is probably some reason why e-mail in is not supported for the default groups, but don’t know what that is.

[nathank (Nathan Kershaw)]

@Architect

Good to know, don’t understand what a “Rails” console is but that is accessed through the standard console?

Yup, it is. This topic explains it while addressing a different problem:

Rebake all posts matching a pattern

Want to rebake all the posts matching a string or regular expression? Let’s do it! Access Your Site First connect to your Droplet via SSH, and enter the Docker container for your Discourse instances: cd /var/discourse ./launcher enter app Rebake All Posts Containing a Specific String Run this command: rake posts:rebake_match["pattern"] Replace pattern with the string you want to match. Note that the match performed will be case insensitive. rake posts:rebake_match[""] The ab…

@Architect

Would guess there is probably some reason why e-mail in is not supported for the default groups, but don’t know what that is.

I suspect that there was a good reason for it, but I’m not sure that there is any longer.

[maiki]

@nathank

I suspect that there was a good reason for it, but I’m not sure that there is any longer.

The default groups don’t quite operate in a consistent manner as users/staff might expect. A lot of permissions and settings are tied to these default (I call them “special”) groups, and it would not always be appropriate to send email to them (not just admins or moderators, but also TL0-4, and everyone).

That being said, I use groups and incoming messages on several sites and none of my sites have so many users in a default group that I have issues managing them for group inbox purposes.

So there might be a feature request to add incoming email support, or one that addresses user management for new groups.

[Architect]

That could be good for new feature request to work with the default groups, at least for the administrator, staff, and moderator groups would make sense for this to work.

Wouldn’t make too much sense for TL 0 / Everyone groups to have an e-mail-in address receiver, but there could be some use-cases for that.

At least for this guide would be helpful to mention that currently this is only for created groups, that is not clear from the way this is written:

@Discourse

Setting up incoming emails on a group

To setup incoming emails on a group, go to your groups page by clicking the “groups” link from the main menu, then click the name of the group (or create a new one).

That is a wiki post but I can’t edit that myself as a new member account here.

Don’t know what kind of budget it would take to sponsor a new feature development for this, seems like may not be that complicated/difficult but also potentially better left as is?