Discourse as a private email support portal

[DavidGNavas (David García-Navas)]

Super excited about this feature, we find an interesting use case for this in order to manage communication with clients via auto-categorised messages instead of very long email threads, some of them with 0 interest for some coworkers

Only one question: What will happen with emails with more than one recipients out of the community?

For example, client1 asks for support with an email to the specified address, but he copies another people: client2 and client3. So, could client2 and client3 see the topic in the Discourse instance? or only view the replies by email? I think if they view only the messages via email would be enough, but i was wondering about this.

[zogstrip (Régis Hanol)]

So, could client2 and client3 see the topic in the Discourse instance?

If they don’t already have an account on Discourse, we’ll create a staged one based on their email address. They’ll then be able to see all the topics they’re in once they create an account using the same email address

[meglio (Anton)]

So at this stage is there a way to turn the staged users ON and let people create support topics from unregistered emails?

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Yes this works now and we use it in meta, @zogstrip we really need a #howto on this.

[tobiaseigen]

I am quite keen on this as well. Look forward to seeing how this can work for us.

[carlokok]

It’s working very well for us already. (http://talk.remobjects.com, support@ is hooked up to a private group)

[downey (Michael Downey)]

How does this work with SSO (e.g., external user management systems)?

[carlokok]

@downey the staged users get hooked up properly as long as the SSO hands you back a matching email address.

[phi (Philippe Rollin)]

@sam @zogstrip was an #howto made for this? I can’t find any information about how to setup this feature

[downey (Michael Downey)]

hooked up properly as long as the SSO hands you back a matching email address

… And if they don’t match?

[carlokok]

Afaik thats currently an unsolved issue

[rriemann (Robert)]

In the context of a message in a support category, whispers should be visible and usable by all users who have access to the support category. This means that in some cases non-moderators may have access to the whisper feature.

Is this whisper in support-category already implemented? How can I turn a category into a support category?

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

There is no support category, what we settled on was using group messages as the “support-category”

@zogstrip is working on a howto which will clarify how everything works now and is configured.

[rriemann (Robert)]

Thank you. I think I will figure it out then.

Last question: Is whispering working for communication within non-staged users
in group messages started by staged accounts?

[sam (Sam Saffron)]

Whisper works everywhere, but whisper functionality is staff only.

[DeanMarkTaylor (Dean Taylor)]

One thing that I don’t see mentioned above and what we are using is to promote a private conversation to a public one by moving it in a public category.

This has now been implemented, see here:

Convert a private message to public topic or vice versa

I just pushed a commit that adds a button (visible to staff) to admin wrench to make a topic public or private message. Convert public topic to private message: [screen shot 2016-05-02 at 20 56 52] Small action post indicating that public topic is converted to private message: [screen shot 2016-05-02 at 21 02 10] Convert private message to public topic: [screen shot 2016-05-02 at 21 20 29] Small action post indicating that private message is converted to public topic: [screen shot 2016-05…

[rriemann (Robert)]

@zogstrip is working on a howto which will clarify how everything works now and is configured.

Can you please provide the link to the howto in this topic here?

[erlend_sh (Erlend Sogge Heggen)]

Sure. This should be the canonical page for this feature from now on anyhow:

Configuring Reply via Email

If your Discourse does not have incoming email set up, here’s how: if you already have basic reply via email set up (which is common on hosting plans), and you want to add the ability to start a new topic via email, see this topic. You have two options for enabling incoming emails to your Discourse: polling via POP3 or pushing to the API 1. Polling emails via POP3 If you want to poll emails using POP3 you must first setup email polling. For that, I recommend that you follow the tutor…