The discussion revolves around using Discourse as an interface for managing email, specifically Gmail. bluekeys proposes the idea of using Discourse for email, citing its features such as group conversations, modern UI/UX, and dating system. They suggest two possible approaches: digesting Gmail through Discourse or using a custom mail server with Discourse as the front-end.
itsbhanusharma shares a link to a discussion on IMAP support for group inboxes, but nathank points out that it’s in alpha stages and not actively supported. Instead, nathank suggests a discussion on SMTP support for group inboxes, which allows for both incoming and outgoing mail capabilities.
However, itsbhanusharma notes that SMTP only allows outbound capabilities and that IMAP is needed for email sync to work in both directions. nathank clarifies that the SMTP support discussed also covers incoming mail from the same account, although the details are not specified.
martin confirms that the incoming email is forwarded from the SMTP account to the group inbox, and that email notifications are sent via the same SMTP account. However, this does not handle full syncing like IMAP, and both IMAP and SMTP support are limited to the group inbox.
I’ve searched Google and can’t find anything directly speaking to this question/idea.
I would really like to use Discourse for Gmail. Think- email for discourse in reverse. Lots of people want to be able to reply to a topic directly from their Gmail account. What I’d like to do is the opposite. I want to manage my Gmail through a Discourse interface.
I like the group conversations, and the modern UI/UX, and the dating system of reading old messages and replies.
This is not only the perfect platform for forum discussion and group conversation, but also 1-on-1 direct email as well. Since 1-on-1 DMs are already supported here, I think it would be great if I had a way of either:
Digesting Gmail through Discourse
OR
Using my own mail server with Discourse as the front-end.
I prefer the former. I do not know how I would even start working on a project like this, but the level of organization this could bring to the lives of millions would change the email world forever- like gmail did decades ago (and ceased to continue doing).
If you read SMTP support for group inboxes carefully, you’ll see that it also covers incoming mail from the same account. I’m not quite sure how (whether IMAP or POP3) as they don’t specify details on that side of things, but it seems to utilise the existing incoming email address functionality of groups.
That’s exactly how it works – the incoming email forwarded from the SMTP account goes to the group, and when email notifications are sent from that group inbox, they are sent via the same SMTP account. This does not handle full syncing like IMAP (e.g. labels, archiving/unarchiving, deleting) but it probably gets you halfway there. The caveat with both IMAP and SMTP support is that they are both limited to the group inbox.