This howto describes what is involved in configuring
the incoming mail gateway to enable the automatic
creation of bugs from mail submitted to an external
mail source.
Note: JDK 1.3 or later is required to
support an incoming mail gateway.
Ozibug can configured with an incoming mail gateway to
enable the automatic creation of bugs from mail
submitted to an external mail source. This can be used,
for example, in a support or help desk situation where
all problems are submitted via email and subsequently
tracked in Ozibug.
Each module that is to have automatic bug creation
enabled, should be mapped to an account on your mail
server, eg., the module myModule might
be mapped to the account
myModule-bugs@mydomain.com.
Periodically Ozibug will check with the mail server for
the presence of any new mail for each of the configured
modules and automatically create a bug with the
following attributes corresponding to each message.
summary - subject of the message
detailed description - body text of the message or
a standard description to refer to the file
attachments in the case of non-text bodies.
creator - corresponding Ozibug user for a message
submitted from an email address that maps to a
single registered Ozibug user, otherwise
Anonymous.
notifications - email address of the submitter for
bugs submitted anonymously.
file attachments - any message attachments such as
log files, screen dumps or non-text bodies.
status - new.
priority - default value or value with lowest sort
order.
private bug - true or false as per the create bugs
as private system preference.
fixed list custom categories - default value or
value with lowest sort order.
As per normal bug creation an email notification is
sent to the creator and any other nominated recipients.
The following system preferences are used to configure
the incoming mail gateway.
Allow incoming mail - set to true to enable the
incoming mail gateway. Changing this value will
cause the incoming mail gateway to be
enabled/disabled as appropriate.
Allow anonymous creation of bugs - set to true to
enable creation of bugs submitted anonymously, ie.,
from an email address that does not map to a single
registered Ozibug user. Bugs submitted anonymously
will have a creator of Anonymous
and the Notifications field set to the email
address of the submitter. Leave set to the default
value of false for a tightly controlled system or
if spam submissions are a problem.
Incoming mail server - set to the server that
incoming mail is to be retrieved from. The value
of the outgoing mail (SMTP) server will be used by
default.
Incoming mail protocol - set to the protocol that
is to be used to retrieve mail from the incoming
mail server. POP3 is used by default, with IMAP
also available.
Incoming mail port - set to the port on the server
that incoming mail is to be retrieved from. This
should normally be left at the default setting of
-1 which indicates that the default port for the
protocol should be used (ie., 110 for POP3 or 143
for IMAP). It should only be necessary to change
this value if a non-standard port is used.
Incoming mail check interval - set to the interval
at which incoming mail server should be checked for
the presence of new mail. An appropriate value for
this setting will depend on factors such as the
volume of incoming mail to be processed, the
frequency at which it is received, the priority that
is to be given to processing it, the load placed on
both the mail server and Ozibug by checking too
frequently. The default value of 10 minutes is a
reasonable starting point and can be tuned once a
pattern of usage has been established. Changing
this value will cause the incoming mail gateway task
to be rescheduled to repeat at the required
frequency.
Base system url - set to the fully qualified base
url of the Ozibug installation, eg.,
http://www.mydomain.com/ozibug.
This value will be used to construct the
viewBugLink in mail notifications and must be
specified to enable the automatic creation of bugs.
Setting/unsetting this value will cause the incoming
mail gateway to be enabled/disabled as appropriate.
The following reference data can be used to further
configure the incoming mail gateway.
Module - to enable a module for the the creation of
bugs submitted from an external mail source, values
for the following fields must be defined.
Incoming mail username - set to the username
that is to be used to connect to the incoming
mail server with. Must be specified and unique
across the actives modules configured for
incoming mail.
Incoming mail password - set to the password
that is to be used to connect to the incoming
mail server with. Must be specified.
Priority and fixed list custom categories - to
enable specific values to be set for newly created
bugs, define a default value for the corresponding
category.
To further configure the incoming mail gateway
customizations can be made to the file
OZIBUG_HOME/WEB-INF/ozibug.properties
One or more properties of the following format can be
specified to send email notifications automatically
(perhaps to support personnel) when a bug is first
created.
#
# notifications.new.x.y
#
# Where x is the module name (can be * for all modules)
# y is the bug priority (can be * for all priorities)
#
will send notifications to the user (or mailing list)
myModule-support@mydomain.com for all new bugs with the
default priority of email in the module myModule.
