Support

Yes, of course you can. Documentation: https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/ats-for-joomla/receiving-emails.html

To create tickets by email you need to set the “Create ticket by email” option in the plugin to Yes.

To allow replies to existing tickets by email you need to set the “Reply by email” option in the plugin to Yes.

The options can, of course, be combined.

Please do read the documentation page to understand what are the limitations of creating tickets by email and the setup you need on your end.

Did you maybe miss Chapter 7: Automation and CRON Scripts in the documentation? It is linked to from the page I told you to read:

You will need to create a CRON job, either using the CRON CLI script or the CRON URL.

https://www.akeeba.com/documentation/ats-for-joomla/receiving-emails.html

If you mean something different, can you please specify how chapter 7 doesn't cover you so I have a better idea of what you are looking for?

You have set the CRON job to run once a day, at 12:00 noon on the server's timezone (not necessarily your timezone).

You should instead use Minute */5 and every other field * which tells the CRON server to run this CRON job every 5'.

Moreover, ask your host how you can see (or receive by email) the output of the CRON job. This would tell you if your configuration is correct. I do not think that your configuration in screenshot #9 is correct. I have never seen an IMAP server using port 21 (port 21 is used by FTP servers). It looks like I am right:

$ nmap -Pn mail.xxxx.nl -p 21
Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2023-06-28 15:56 EEST
Nmap scan report for mail.xxxx.nl (185.xxx.xx.xx)
Host is up (0.067s latency).

PORT   STATE  SERVICE
21/tcp closed ftp

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.08 seconds

Most likely you want port 993, the default port for IMAP over SSL/TLS which I see is open on your mailserver.

I have not seen any IMAP server released the last 15 years use TLSv1.0 either. TLSv1.1 or later is more likely to work, unless your host explicitly told you to use TLS 1.0, stressing the 1.0 part.

Receiving emails: Moreover, ask your host how you can see (or receive by email) the output of the CRON job. This would tell you if your configuration is correct. We really need to see the output.

Sending emails: This is just standard Joomla email sending. Go to your site's Global Configuration and check your email setup there. Make sure your site can send emails. If your site cannot send emails then neither can Akeeba Ticket System (since emails are sent by Joomla itself, not ATS).

First, please download and install the latest dev release from https://www.akeeba.com/download/ats-dev/5-2-8-dev202306261101-rev89862f53.html. This addresses an issue with the default category in the mailfetch plugin we just fixed for another client (a very big installation, actually) which I believe might be affecting you.

Now, let's walk this back, staring with the ATS Category you are using. Click on its Ticket Options tab. There is a Category Email. Make sure this is the email you are receiving tickets in.

Also, make sure this is the same category you have used in the plugin's configuration as the Default Category.

Now send an email to that email address. Make sure this email is received by your mail server and also make sure the mail is marked unread and it's in the INBOX (not a subdirectory of it, or your spam). Remember that if the mail is marked read the email fetch plugin won't try to read it. If the mail is not in the INBOX folder the email fetch plugin won't see it.

Let the CRON job run. You will now get a new ticket.

No ticket has been made, also no user (?).

The way I read this, you are sending an email from an email address which does not correspond to a user of the site. That's a very crucial detail :)

If this is the case then you are missing another step: enabling guest tickets. Remember that, by default, only registered users on your site who have adequate permissions to post tickets can send emails and have their emails be converted to tickets. Enabling guest tickets allows anyone with any random email address send an email to your ticket system, creating both a user and a ticket at the same time.

I have made the ticket private so only you and me can see the replies here.

I will need a LOT of access to help you, much more than just access to Joomla's backend. Here is what I need to start helping you.

1. Site Administrator Access
   • URL to your site's administrator login page (e.g. https://www.example.com/administrator/index.php?foobar)
   • Super User username
   • Super User password
   • If you have a password protection before the login page:
     • Admin protection Username
     • Admin protection Password 
2. FTP / SFTP Access
   • Which one should I use: FTP, FTP over SSL/TLS, SFTP
   • Hostname
   • Port (if other than 21 for FTP or 22 for SFTP)
   • Username
   • Password
   • Directory which corresponds to your site's web root
3. Email Access (For The Account Receiving Support Requests)
   • IMAP hostname
   • IMAP port
   • IMAP username
   • IMAP password
4. SSH Access (If Available)
   • SSH Hostname
   • SSH Port
   • SSH Username
   • SSH Password
5. Hosting Control Panel Access (To Control CRON Jobs)
   • Hosting control panel URL
   • Username
   • Password
   • ** Make sure it does NOT ask for a second authentication factor upon login

I need the site admin access to configure the plugin and view the logs.

I need the FTP/SFTP access in case I need to add extra debugging to the code.

I need the email access so I can a. configure the plugin and b. watch what happens to the mailbox.

I need the SSH access to run the mailfetch. If this is not available I will use the alternate method (URLs) to trigger mailfetch manually.

I need the hosting control panel so I can disable CRON jobs before debugging and re-enable them after I am done. It will also help me understand if the CRON jobs are set up correctly (including the correct PHP version) or not.

You can expect me to start working on it either Sunday (if I have time) or Monday.

Um, Frank? When I tried sending a ticket to [email protected] I got a response from Freshdesk. Here's what I got:

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If you have another ticket system trying to read email from the same inbox as ATS then it makes sense that ATS cannot find any emails; they are caught by the other ticket system...

I cannot help you unless you have a mailbox which is NOT shared with any other ticket system, application, human user, or automation.

Great news! Now that I have the correct address, it works :)

It looks like there was a bug in the third party Horde library we are using to retrieve email. My associate, Davide, fixed that late on Friday evening. This morning, before doing anything else, I installed this update on your site assuming that you may be affected. And yes, that was it.

I will be making a new release tomorrow which includes this fix.

You're welcome!

I am very happy that you are switching from a proprietary service to self-hosted, Open Source software. I strongly believe that owning your data is of paramount importance and why I became a FOSS developer in the first place. The pay isn't phenomenal, the hours are long, but if I can help people be back in control of their data then it's all been worth it.

Thank you for being willing to work with me to address your issue. I know that at some point you were frustrated, and I know it wasn't easy to not give up hope. I truly appreciate it.

Have a great evening!

The stable version is identical to the dev release (except the version number).

No problem :)