Akeeba Ticket System

Friday, 03 September 2021 11:57 CDT

Hello,

Previously, the ATS-Fetch Email plugin was working on our Joomla Site. Recently, the mail fetch plugin stopped working. It was configured with the GSuite mailbox successfully and working fine for over 4 months.

In my troubleshooting efforts, I did the following:

1.) Created a new GSuite project

2.) Reconfigured the Email Fetch plugin with the new API Client ID and Secret Key

When clicking the "Sign In with Google" button to authorize the new project, no pop up box appears as it did during the first successful configuration. Additionally, I have tried this on multiple browsers to no avail.

When logging into the Google Cloud console, I see that I still have 21 projects left in my quota.

One change in our environment is that we have now gone to an SSO authentication. Would this change manifest itself with our symptoms?

When logging on to Gmail now, we are not presented with the standard Google authentication dialog box, rather we are redirected to our organization's branded logon dialog. Do you have customers that are configured to used the Fetch Email plug in with GSuite and SSO authentication?

Thanks in advance for any assistance,

Thanks,

Eric Johnson

Monday, 06 September 2021 02:39 CDT

nicholas

Most browsers will block pop–up windows to URLs outside the site they were initiated from. Have you checked if you get a blocked pop–up?

If not, do you get any JavaScript errors in your browser's console?

We really don't have many people using the email integration at all, let alone the GSuite integration. I think that besides you and another client (who's a Joomla extensions developer and unlikely to ask for support) we don't have any other people using GSuite.

Regarding SSO, we have nobody else using that option in GSuite. Google's documentation doesn't indicate that anything should be different on our side. The authentication requires us to send you to a predefined URL, something something something happens on Google's side, we get a code that we exchange for a token using the API keys you configured and then use this token to login to Google's SMTP server (also a predefined domain name). Based on that we are led to believe that regardless of whether you use plain old Gmail, GSuite, GSuite with SSO and whether you have Two Factor Authentication enabled or not for them it should all work the same. Of course Google's documentation leaves a lot to be desired and isn't known for always being accurate or up–to–date so I can't tell you within any degree of certainty whether that is the case or not. You know as much as we know.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 07 September 2021 12:52 CDT

[email protected]

Hello,

Thanks for the detailed history. Seems like using the Google oAuth method is highly subject to change without notice. I am trying IMAP. Here are my steps and questions:

-Create mailbox on IMAP service (zohomail.com)

-Verify IMAP connectivity from IMAP client (Windows10)

-Configure Fetch Email plug in to use new mailbox

-Email tickets are not being created

Testing steps:

-From ATS server I have tried manually running the ats-cron.php mailfetch command and also the URL method. Both cases, I get an OK response, but no email ticket is created.

The versbose switch when using the ats-cron.php mailfetch command doesn't provide any useful information regarding this issue.

Do you have any suggestions on troubleshooting IMAP connections?

Thanks in advance,

Eric

Tuesday, 07 September 2021 13:12 CDT

[email protected]

Hello,

To add further data points:

-I intentionally set the password for the mailbox in the FetchMail plugin to something that was incorrect.

-When manually running the cron command with verbose output, the job still says:

Akeeba Ticket System -- CRON Script

===============================================================================

Current memory usage : 1.85 MB

Beginning checking for emails

Attempting to connect to mail server

Checking for unread email sent after Mon, 06 Sep 2021 17:24:01 +0000

SUCCESS -- CRON job finished after approximately 9 seconds

Current memory usage : 2.68 MB

Peak memory usage : 3.68 MB

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Eric

Tuesday, 07 September 2021 14:01 CDT

[email protected]

Hello,

When configuring the mailFetch plugin with the new GSuite project, I see this error in the Developer Console (see attachment).

As it stands currently, neither IMAP or GSuite is working.

Thanks,

Eric

Edited by on 2021-10-07 20:45 CDT

Wednesday, 08 September 2021 08:14 CDT

nicholas

I have tested IMAP again, with a live server. It works. I can see email messages resulting in new tickets and ticket replies just fine, assigned to the correct categories.

I have confirmed that if you do enter the wrong connection information you will get an error right under the “Checking for unread email” line. You did not get such an error therefore you have not entered the wrong information. Your mail server accepted the connection. There were just no emails.

Do note that ATS lists emails received by your mail server after a specific date and time. In your message it says that it's looking for emails sent after Mon, 06 Sep 2021 17:24:01 +0000. If the emails you have on the server are sent before that time they will be silently ignored.

Another thing you need to do in your testing. Since you have changed the email address which receives emails you need to reflect that in each ATS category. Have you made sure that the correct email address is listed there?

There is really no issue with the software. It's just that trying to set up creating and replying to tickets by email is complicated. Having had this experience with Akeeba Ticket System I have vowed not to ever again create a feature that integrates with email servers. You can see me rejecting this feature repeatedly in the Akeeba Engage public GitHub issues and discussion threads. In all honesty, it's your repeated tickets about email issues which made me unwilling to do email integration ever again. Mail servers are messy, complicated and you need a very deep understanding of how all moving pieces work to troubleshoot them. You issue here could be anything from DNS, to the server's time zone, to email account setup, to email alias (forwarder) setup, to networking. There is just no good way to know what so we can help you.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Thursday, 30 September 2021 15:54 CDT

[email protected]

Nicholas,

Firstly, thank you for your support and patience. I appreciate that integrating a feature that you have no control over as a developer is frustrating and understandably difficult to support. However, for any enterprise organization, email integration for tickets is a must have feature. So once again, thank you for your support and patience!

I have done much testing and checking. I can confirm that the configuration and categories are/were setup correctly. However, GSuite OAuth no longer works for me. I have engaged our GSuite administrator and we have spent numerous hours troubleshooting and testing and going through your documentation to no avail.

The good news is that we are now able to use IMAP to access our helpdesk mailbox. We created an Application specific password. The caveat is that you must enable two factor authentication on the mailbox to use this feature.

The other interesting tidbit is that IMAP works but POP3 does not. This is fine for our use but I thought you might be interested to know and recommend this to other Google mail users.

Thank you,

Eric Johnson

Support