Configuring incoming email for your system

You must configure incoming email before users can communicate with FootPrints via email. You must set up at least one POP3 or IMAP email account for the exclusive use of FootPrints. Otherwise, FootPrints deletes the mail from the POP3 account, does not enter it as a request, and the mail is lost.

The system checks the account inbox every 60 seconds and moves new messages into the appropriate internal inboxes.

You can refine how the system processes incoming email by using any of the following options:

• Configure one email account for your entire system or associate individual email accounts with each item in a container. For tracking purposes, we recommend that you set up separate accounts for sending and receiving emails.
• Specify out-of-office and word filters to screen incoming email messages.
• Specify error handling.
• Set the maximum message size.

The following video (05:41) provides information about how to set up incoming email on your new FootPrints server:

  https://youtu.be/iCbWqTEtsZU

Email servers

Most email servers are shipped with one or all protocols enabled. Each mail server is different with its default protocol support. for some of the larger mail systems, like Exchange, these protocols are not enabled due to interoperability with their own client software (For example, Outlook) that knows how to communicate by using MAPI. In these cases, configure the mail server to use either POP3 or IMAP; otherwise, incoming email does not function. FootPrints supports the following types of incoming email protocols:

Before you begin

Make sure that the item and container that you want to use as the default (for creating records) have been configured, and the container has been published.
You must also have the following email server information:

FootPrints supports OAuth for incoming email.
Before you configure incoming email with OAuth:

1. Register FootPrints with Microsoft. For more information, see the Microsoft documentation or website.
2. Generate the Client ID , Tenant ID , and Client Secret for FootPrints.

To configure incoming email for your system

1. Click the Administration tab.
2. In the System Management section, click Email Settings > Incoming Email (System).
   The System Incoming Email page is displayed.
   
   
3. In the Incoming Email section, click Add.
   The Configure Account dialog box is displayed. All fields are required.

4. From the Email Retrieval Protocol menu, select the applicable protocol. Depending on the protocol selected, the following fields are displayed. All fields are required. 

   Protocol	Fields
   IMAP IMAP/SSL POP3 POP3/SSL	User ID, Password, Email Address, Email Server Address, Email Server Port
   Exchange Web Services (EWS)	User ID, Password, Email Address, Email Server Address, Domain Name Important In the User ID field, enter the user name only. Example For the user account johnsmith@abc.xyz, enter only johnsmith.
   Microsoft 365 - OAuth 2.0	Client ID, Email Address, Client Secret, Tenant ID

5. In the Default Ticket Type field, select the container and item that you want to use as the defaults when creating records from incoming email. When an email arriving in this email box that does not identify the desired container item, the system generates a ticket of the default type.
6. Click Save.
7. (Optional) In the Out-of-Office Filters section, select the level of screening that you want to apply for incoming email.
   For more information, see Email filters. 
8. (Optional) In the Filter if Specified Words Appear in Subject Field table, perform these steps:
   
   1. To edit an existing filter, click the pencil icon next to the filter. Modify the Filtered Word field and click Update.
   2. To add a new filter, click Add.
      In the new row, enter the word or phrase that you want to filter and click Update.
   3. To delete a filter, select the filter row and click Delete.
      In the confirmation that appears, click Yes.
   4. To return these settings to the defaults, click Reset.
      All custom filters are deleted and the default filters are returned to their original settings.
9. In the Email Address Filters section, perform these steps:
   1. To add an address, perform these steps:
      1. Click Add.
      2. In the Filtered Address field, enter the address that you want to filter.
         Wildcards are permitted.
      3. In the Action field, select an action.
         The options are Do not accept from address, Accept only from address, and Always accept from address.
      4. Click Update.
   2. To edit an address, click the pencil icon next to the filter. Modify the fields as needed and click Update.
   3. To delete an address, select the check box next to the address and click Delete.
      In the confirmation message that appears, click Yes.
10. In the Error Notification & Content Restrictions section, perform these steps:
    1. (Optional) In the Error Notification section, select whether to send notifications to the submitter and to specified administrators.
       The default is to notify only the submitter.

    2. (Optional) Select Enable email debugging.
       Debugging information related to the processing of incoming email requests is saved in the footprints.log file. The footprints.log file is stored in the FootPrints installation folder (for example, C:\Program Files\BMC Software\FootPrints\logs).

    3. (Optional) In the Content Restrictions section, enter the maximum size allowed for incoming messages including attachments.
       The default is 1 MB.
11. Click Save.
    Your changes are implemented. 

Specifying parameters for email processing

You can specify the values for the number of emails that you want FootPrints to process in each monitoring cycle and the interval between each monitoring cycle. You can change these values according to your current FootPrints environment.

After you install FootPrints, a configuration file named footprints_incoming_email_processing.properties is automatically created in the \conf folder. The following parameters are present in this file:

• recurrenceInterval defines the interval between each monitoring cycle.
  If the interval is less than or equal to one minute, the monitoring cycle continues each minute. This is the default behavior.
• batchSize defines the number of emails to be processed in each monitoring cycle.
  If the value is less than or equal to one, FootPrints processes 1,000 emails in the monitoring cycle. This is the default behavior.

After you specify these parameter values, make sure that you restart the Tomcat server.

If you do not specify these parameters, FootPrints assumes the default values.

Where to go from here

To test your configuration, configure incoming email for a Workspace and follow the testing instructions in Configuring incoming email for workspaces.