Can't forward an email to a group & preserve the content

Feature
1

Continuing the discussion from Category not accepting "anonymous email" from known users:

On a similar note, I tried to forward an email from the user having problems to a different email alias that was mapped to the Group X membership.

Reproduce:

  1. Create a group to which anyone can @mention or send messages.
  2. Assign a valid POP alias to that group.
  3. As an admin, forward an email to that group alias with some introductory text & CC the original author.

Expected Results:

  • The original author, whose email address matches a valid Discourse user, is added to the direct message.
  • The original email content is preserved and appears in the lead post within the Group Message.

Actual Results:

  • The original author, whose email address matches a valid Discourse user, is added to the direct message. (Yay!)
  • The original email content is not preserved and does not appear in the lead post within the Group Message. Only the introductory text is posted.
1 Like
2

Why would it be? This is a quoted email, exactly the kind we try to suppress when an email reply comes through.

I don’t see any feature that promised forwarding email would work – that has never been on the table, ever.

3

Well, it was on the table a year ago. I guess I’d assumed it was fixed.

4

Because it might be relevant here, this is how Help Scout handles manually forwarded messages:

“Notes” in Help Scout are akin to to “Whispers” in Discourse.

3 Likes
5

FWIW, that doc seems to be how Desk.com handles support cases as well. It seems like a solid model, although to be clear I’d take anything that could preserve the content. (Since it’s easy enough to change post ownership in Discourse.)

6

For the record I find “Forwarding” support a great feature if we can work out all the mechanics.

Ideally I would like this to work:

  • I get an email to my personal mailbox with a Discourse question.
  • I forward “email” to team
  • We create a topic on behalf the person who originally sent me the email.
  • (profit) another email in my mailbox I don’t need to deal with in GMail and team can help triage

The case of “introductory text” though is tricky. That would have to be injected as a whisper.

7 Likes
7

In my case, the only reason there was intro text was because I was explaining why the email was being forwarded (due to this bug). :slight_smile:

8

Forwarding single emails will work as of Discourse 1.7.

3 Likes