Major Additions - Email Integration (New Threads/Replies by and through email!)

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

Complete with the user's receiving emails for new threads and replies AND being able to reply directly from email or sending a new email to start a new thread!

Just like email lists, you will need a separate email box for EACH forum that you have this enabled for!!

After installing this modification in the forum manager you will enter the settings for each forum to connect to it's own email box.

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 in one of two formats that you as the administrator decide. One format has a "reply box" and is the most sure fire way of not getting excess email crap ont he forums. The second format (noted as "Old" format) keeps an email in its base pure form with some attempts at quoting messages. Examples of both are 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!

IMAP
You MUST have php imap functions enabled on your server to use this modification! You do not need to have IMAP installed, just have to enable php to use the functions by recompiling it with imap enabled!

If you are upgrading from the version
for vbulletin 3.6.x , see below!

BUGS!
These are the known bugs to date:

• Unconfirmed 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!

• 2.5 Release
• • New Features
    • Email Integration now uses vbmail! This DOES require one small file edit.
• 2.5.1 Release -
  • New Feature -
    • Added some debug triggers in the cron file. Turning on debug will stop email sfrom being deleted after they are processed and if a message errors out, the error email will be sent to an admin specified email address which is set in the cron file.
  • Bug Fixes -
    • Fixed incorrect call to plain text parsing. (this is the cause of the duplicate posting/undefined function errors)
    • Corrected security hole.
    • Corrected a typo in the error message for attachments that are too large.
    • Rebuilt the method of determining attachment types vs max size to handle more then 2 attachments. Previous code would not process more then 2 attachments.
    • Added a call to determine the parentid for replies if one isn't specified prior to the post being added to the database from emails.
    • Fixed a bug where previous messages were blank in new layout for posts that didn't have a parentid specified.
• 2.5.2 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed bug with new users not being automatically subscribed to forums when it is enabled for their usergroup.
    • Added a dirty regex fix for utf-8 encoded filenames.
• 2.5.3 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Fixed bug that displayed "Set All Instant" on User CP Subscribe Forums page when no forums were setup for Instant Email Notification.
    • Fixed bug that allowed forums that were set inactive to appear on the User CP SUbscribe Forums page.
    • Fixed bug with the how the "New Layout" processs improving how it tries to remove the first layer of > signs in replies.
  • Improvement/Bug Fix
    • Changed the field in the Forum Manager for forum['ei_usergroups'] so that it now controls not only who can reply via email. But who can receive instant notification emails. It is now titled "Please enter the usergroup IDs that can use this feature."
    • Added the phrase "You may increase the space between the above lines as needed." to the "New Layout" email templates to alleviate user confusion.
• 2.5.4 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Added a quickfix for a bug that caused a function error when replying to a thread that a user was subscribed to while in a forum that was enabled for Email Integration.
  • Error Checks Added
    • Added a function exists check to the cron file and the search settings page to warn people when they have not correctly enabled imap functions.
• 2.5.5 Release
  • Bug Fixes
    • Added a check to subscribeforum.php to not display subscription options for forums that are links.
    • Fixed a bug that caused the cron to incorrectly list the username and signature in the emails. (The post processed to the forums were correct, it was just the emails that were screwy sometimes.)
    • Slightly modified phrase and variables for replies so that if a post has a title, it'll use that title for the email, if not, it'll use the thread title like before.
• 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 3.7x

Upgrading from version for 3.6.x

• Due to using different product ID's due to the changes that will be coming up for the version for vbulletin 3.7.x you will need to uninstall the 3.6.x version and install the 3.7.x version in this thread. My apologies for the inconvienance, I've been unable to determine an alternative with the 3.6.x version still in development due to the last few bugs.

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

[leitel]

Got this mod working. As I look it over, I notice that the "From" is showing my server SMTP domain. What need is to have the from domain be the same address as the mailed-by domain.
Thank you

[tommythejoat]

Originally Posted by itconsultingnv

Continuing to have the problem where it works for awhile, posts to the forum are sent out and email responses are posted, then suddenly, for no apparent reason it keeps sending an email post over and over and over, when I check the webmail I see the offending email post as well as other posts sent after that one that are sitting there waiting to be processed. If I go into the cron it gives me a line 1093 error, then if I go to the webmail, clear out all of the emails, then run the ei cron again it no longer errors. Don't know if that is related in some way. Anyone know what to do? Is Cyrcicx still supporting this software? Not sure if I should continue spending time on this option until further notice. Please help. Anyone else running this successfully? Thanks!

I have been trying to get this going also. I am willing to spend quite a bit of time on it and have been looking through a listing of the cron job.

There seem to be a number of places where the incoming email format does not get handled properly and eventually you get around to processing a message that generates a fatal error. 1093 is one of the error lines. That particular one seems to be eliminated by commenting it out, but it looks like one needs to know the vBulletin function library pretty well to be able to effectively read the code.

Is there anyone participating here who is a programmer of this material? It is very new to me, although I have about 30 years experience as a programmer in other environments.

Debugging something running on a server with a live message board is kind of painful.

I am running 3.7.3 pl1 and the latest version of the mod posted here.

I set up my server mailbox as a pop3 source for my personal mail that I can turn on or off. That lets me pull the pathological emails out of the box and continue testing. If you leave them in, the scheduled task will continue to process everything with a datetime later than the broken email and the cron job will generate its fatal error on every pass.

I think it might be better to disable the scheduled running of the routine and just run it manually when you want to work on it. That way you can put output statements in the code and see them in the AdminCP as the routine runs.

[kevinh]

Originally Posted by itconsultingnv

I am getting the same problem as Tom S. The cron is not cleaning out the POP account and will continually repost. When this occurs and you go to scheduled tasks the cron gives you the 1093 error. If you clean out the pop account and rerun the cron everything works again, until someone posts an email reply with something odd with the email which trips the cron. Then your back in the loop again. Really want this script working but not sure why this is occurring still (have 3.6.2) ... Been posting to another thread where toivo has been assisting but not sure that is right. Uggh... really love the script, want to use it for our non-profit. Can you tell me if this is a known bug and if the issue will ever be resolved.

I had the problem mentioned above and after doing the suggested mods in the other thread I now have it working. Start with post #843 on this page https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthrea...151222&page=57

NOTE: This URL points to the other thread for this mod in the vB 3.6 forum.

We're running vB 3.7.1 and we use Email Integration with plain text email. I seem to remember seeing at least one further code tweak that is required if you are running vB later than 3.7.1

[yaku]

I'm going nuts trying to figure this out. I keep getting this error:

Email Integration

Warning: include_once([path]/./includes/cron/emailintegration.php) [function.include-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in [path]/admincp/cronadmin.php on line 113

Warning: include_once() [function.include]: Failed opening '[path]/./includes/cron/emailintegration.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php') in [path]/admincp/cronadmin.php on line 113

Done

I've tried the IMAP and POP3 changes...anyone know what is causing this?

[tfw2005]

I have some suggestions for if/when this things gets back going.

I would like to use this more as a submission deal, where specified contacts who normally wouldn't participate on the forum can send correspondence to a particular email, and it will be posted into a private forum for staff to read.

It can be done now, except I would need to create a user account with each one of their emails so that it doesn't get bounced. And folks working at or for companies may have several different email addresses they use to communicate.

I have no desire to use the subscription or mass emailing system. Just incoming, once, gets posted, staff looks at it on site. Replies to that thread would never be emailed back to anyone. And I guess, the response emails posting replies and not new threads - that could be removed here too. As could the usergroup check.

To prevent spam if the email address got out, I would suggest creating a universal whitelist on the backend, so that we can add addresses at will, similar to how it checks against user accounts. But it checks that one list. We can scan the actual mailbox every so often, and if we see an email from an alternate address, or new person, that we want to continue getting alerts from, we add it.

Would also like a way to leave emails on server, possibly move to a predefined folder in the mail account like "Read" or "Posted".

Not sure if that is too far out of specs for this, but if those options could be added, like "use for correspondence OR use for mailing list" and then fill in options for whatever you choose, that would be cool.

Up side, could also add in RSS feeds from news sources and update blogs from people/companies you want to watch, and put that in the same forum. So you have one place to check on your own site for stuff that needs to be addressed.

I would donate significantly if this could be achieved. Just PM me for further specs if desired.

Good work either way, thanks for the mod, later!

[roalaik]

hello. Can I import from my current list which is in CSV?

[snoopy5]

Hi


1. Is it possible to use this plugin only one-way? I.e. only to send e-mails with all postings of the board out, but without the option to reply by mail?

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.

2. Is this step above a "have to"? Is it possible with the scenario #1 to skip this? I want my users to get all postings, no matter which subforum, but they shall not reply by e-mail.



Thanks in advance

[yinyang]

any chance this moving up to version 3.8?

[ThomasR]

I just installed it on vb 3.8 RC2. "Seems" to be ok but I have several problems (reply by email which never arrives on the forum, part of the email reply box which appears, etc), but I have to check more in depth before asking for help (perhaps I miss something)

[fly]

I'll go ahead and ask this - to see if anyone has by chance done it, before digging into this hack...

I want my users to be able to MMS/email pictures to a specific thread in the forum. This hack seems to be close. I only need the mailbox checking part and then to direct it to a specific thread of my choosing. I'm fine with the pictures being posted anonymously. Usernames would be awesome, but with MMS seems like it would be hard to implement.

I seriously doubt anyone else wants this or has done it, but it doesn't hurt to ask...