Major Additions - Email Integration (New threads/replies by email)

This mod is based off of the Mail Reply modification by Colin F to which I have obtained permission to rewrite and release.

This modification allows you to mimic email lists such as yahoo groups through your forums!

After installing this modification you will have new settings in your forum manager where for each forum you can enable this modification and setup a separate email address to use for each forum that you have this enabled for.

Just like how there is a separate email address for each yahoo group.

After doing so, members can subscribe to each forum that this mod is enabled for to receive notifications for new threads and replies.

Any posts in that forum, will be sent to them via email. (Example email attached below). The users can then reply to that email (which will then be processed and posted to the forums through the cron job that runs every 10 minutes), or they can send a new email to the email address and a brand new thread will be created!

Essentially mimicing an email list! Suddenly those users that hate forums, can still be dragged into the conversations and help keep the forum's activity level up!


BUGS!
These are the known bugs to date:

• Confirmed bug that email processing does not handle Japanese characters.

Unsupported Items
These are the items that are not currently supported:

• Some custom bbcode modifications will not display like they do on the forums in the html emails. Like glow, and the table mod.

TO UPGRADE

• Please see the file in the zip for upgrading!! If your upgrading from version 2.3.X you will need to reverse some file edits that are no longer nessecary!

NEW INSTALL

• See instructions in the zip file.

VERSION HISTORY!
(See the file in the zip for a complete history!)

• 2.6 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Joining an unmoderated public group will now auto subscribe you per the usergroup settings.
    • NO CONFLICTS with Instant Thread Subscription! See details in below post.
  • New Stuff
    • User Option Allow Auto Subscribe - This is an admin allowable, user option that let's the user choose to not be auto subscribed.
    • User Option not receive own posts - A new user option that lets them select to NOT receive their own posts via email.
    • Editted the phrase for the Auto Subscription script to tell people what to do if there are no listings.
    • Added error checks when saving a usergroup for if auto subscriptioin is entered with a forumid for a forum that does not have email integration enabled and also checks that the usergroup you are saing is entered in the forum manager as allowed to use email integration.
• 2.6.1 Release (BETA VERSION)
  • Hot Fix
    • It appears I was unseting a variable too soon. I've corrected this and it has resolved the issue with multiple posted replies on my test server.

Most of these will be slow to make it in til I know I've got the code to handle just about every type of email we could receive But in anycase, here are the ideas for future versions!

• End User Option to subscribe to just receive new thread emails, or receive all new thread & reply emails (current version does all new threads & replies).

Thanks to RedTyger, Bob Denny, Ed Kohwley and Chris McKeever for their additions and assistance with portions of this code.

Huge thanks also goes to the many individuals that have helped test various incarnations of this mod.

MAD PROPS TO: cgmckeever for a great quoting regex for the old format, and all the mods at www.4winmobile.com for helping test version 2.4 prior to release!!

You guys rock!

Please feel free to donate to my continued work on this modification!! It let's me spend more time on it!
Make a Donation!

Version 2.6 will work with both 3.6.8 and 3.7!

The #.X versions are the solid tested versions.

The #.X.X versions are the beta versions. New features and bug fixes will be worked in there and then when I have a solid version it'll be released as the next #.X

Thank you!!

~ Cyricx

[riahiarshia]

Hello,
I can reproduce this. My workaround is to delete the email manually right now. This is happening in testing with just a couple of people sending emails back and fort. I am a little afraid to go to production with it.

Below is the header of one of the messages that had problems.

-Alex


Microsoft Mail Internet Headers Version 2.0
Received: from webaccess.egenera.com ([63.139.209.15]) by bart.corp.egenera.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:48:19 -0400
Received: from psmtp.com ([64.18.3.101]) by webaccess.egenera.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959);
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:49:03 -0400
Received: from source ([216.235.242.184]) (using TLSv1) by exprod8mx201.postini.com ([64.18.7.10]) with SMTP;
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:47:26 CDT
Received: from smithers.egenera.com (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1])
by smithers.egenera.com (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id m6FElKl4024458
for <xxxxxxx@egenera.com>; Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:47:20 -0400
Received: (from apache@localhost)
by smithers.egenera.com (8.13.1/8.13.1/Submit) id m6FElKxl024457;
Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:47:20 -0400
To: xxxxxxx@egenera.com
Subject: RE: [SE FAQ & Tech Talk-t-375] 4 of 5 Dentists Recommend Bob
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:47:17 -0400
From: Rhart <xxxxxxx@egenera.com>
Reply-To: XXXXXX@egenera.com
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Message-Id: <375.640@emailintegration>
References: <375.635@emailintegration>
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: vBulletin Mail via PHP
Return-Path: apache@smithers.egenera.com
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 15 Jul 2008 14:49:03.0596 (UTC) FILETIME=[ECB08AC0:01C8E689]
X-EsetId: 58762D24FC8B26310D36

[Cyricx]

Try turning off strict email checking and let me know please if it still sticks.

[riahiarshia]

Hello,
How do I turn that off ?

[riahiarshia]

Also,
Would it help if I was able to access bart.corp.egenera.com directly instead of going through webaccess.egenera.com? I am not even sure if IT will allow that but if that is a workaround, I can always ask them.

Thanks,
Alex

[kevinh]

We just started using this today on a new forum and one of the first responses to a thread by email kept coming through again and again - 15 times before I changed the user's status so they could no longer respond by email and then it stopped.

I'm guessing that the user's mail server did not recognise that the message had been received and just kept re-sending it.

Is there a way to prevent this from happening? (because it's a sure fire way to upset users quickly if they get the same email 15 times!)

We really need a means to detect and block identical posts.

[riahiarshia]

Kevin,
I believe the reason the Email is being re-sent is that it is not being deleted from the IMAP/POP3 server after it is read. As such, every time the pHp cron activates the module to fetch mail from the IMAP/POP3 server, it fetches the same mail over and over again. In fact, if you look at the thread in the forum portal, you will see the reply is being posted multiple times. Cyricx who developed this module is aware of the problem. I have asked him a couple of questions above to find a quick workaround while he can perhaps rebuild the code.

We cannot use this feature on a large scale right now. It would be an administrative nightmare to troubleshoot.

-Alex

[kevinh]

Thanks for this Alex. The post was indeed posted multiple time in the web view of the forum. Sadly this makes EI unusable for us until this is resolved, because it has the capacity to upset lots of users very quickly

Is it possible to simply disable email replies but retain the email notifications of new posts?

[riahiarshia]

I set 'Strict Email Checking' to 'NO'.
I am testing now. I will send an update as soon as I have some results.

-Alex

[riahiarshia]

That did not help.

[riahiarshia]

I wonder if it would help if I used a different mail server or switch from IMAP to POP3.
Any ideas ?

Will keep you updated...