Forum OpenACS Development: ANN: Reply to a forum msg via email is ready

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1: ANN: Reply to a forum msg via email is ready
Posted by Mounir LALLALI on 05/31/05 04:46 PM
Hello all, we just finish the functionality so you can reply to a message of a forum via email. In other words, you can just reply to the notification email of a new message posted, and the functionality will post the reply to the forum. I uploaded the patch in :
https://openacs.org/bugtracker/openacs/patch?patch_number=677

so you can see the diff with 5.1, and the main explanation.

I tested the code and it is working fine, but i would like to have your help to tested before commiting.

This should be commited just in HEAD?

Kind Regards,
Mounir LALLALI

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2: Re: ANN: Reply to a forum msg via email is ready (response to 1)
Posted by Malte Sussdorff on 05/31/05 06:36 PM
Mounir, thanks a lot for this contribution. What I'm wondering though, to my knowledge replying to forums worked before. I don't see how your patch therefore enhances the situation especially as you do not keep track of the object id's related to the posting. Could you elaborat a little bit more on what you did and why you did it ?
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3: Re: ANN: Reply to a forum msg via email is ready (response to 1)
Posted by Mounir LALLALI on 06/01/05 01:01 PM
In the current version of the dotLRN server it is not possible to make un a reply to the message from the forum via email. The users must connect to the dotLRN server for reply to a message.

The dotLRN server sends the notification email to all the users who requested a notification for a message or a forum. The user receives the notification email.

By modifying the code of the forum and notifications package, now the user can reply the notification email by sending an email to the correct reply address.

If you have an other questions, please don't hesitate

Regards

Mounir LALLALI

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4: Re: ANN: Reply to a forum msg via email is ready (response to 1)
Posted by Deds Castillo on 06/02/05 04:37 AM
In the current version of the dotLRN server it is not possible to make un a reply to the message from the forum via email. The users must connect to the dotLRN server for reply to a message.

Mounir,

What in the code makes it fail for reply by email? Can you elaborate? AFAIK, configuring the parameters correctly in notifications package and doing necessary steps (creating Maildir) already works.

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5: Re: ANN: Reply to a forum msg via email is ready (response to 1)
Posted by Mark Aufflick on 06/02/05 02:41 PM
At elnet.com.au we are running a dotLRN 2.0.2 server that allows email replies fine. Too well in fact - the main problem that we have is out of office messages being forwarded to the form - sometimes in an endless loop!
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6: Re: ANN: Reply to a forum msg via email is ready (response to 1)
Posted by Mounir LALLALI on 06/02/05 04:47 PM
The user receives the notification message in his emailer. He can't reply to this message via email because the reply address is not correct. The reply address was generated by the E-LANE server and is modifiedby each sending.

To use email reply functionality, the administrator of the dotLRN to the should :

1.Create an email account (by installing qmail for instance) for receving the replies of the messages from the forum. This email is the correct reply address (for instance
mailto:emailreply@e-lane.org is an email account created in the server hosting e-lane.org) ;

2.Give to the dotLRN server the right permission on the incoming directory associated to the reply address (for instance emailreply/Maildir/new) to read and delete the incoming messages ;

3.Change the notification parameters in the dotLRN server :

i.Edit the correct reply address to the dotLRN. This address is the concatenation of two variables :
EmailDomain @ EmailReplyAddressPrefix ;

ii.Edit the directory of the incoming emails by affecting a value to the EmailQmailQueue ;

iii.Autorize the server to scan the incoming directory by affecting the value 1 to the variable EmailQmailQueueScan

Fig 3 The configuration of tne parameters notification

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7: Re: ANN: Reply to a forum msg via email is ready (response to 1)
Posted by Mark Aufflick on 06/03/05 04:17 AM
Mounir,

I got your document with screenshots via email thanks. The reason why the email is different every time (eg. mailto:notificaiton-1234@yourhost.com) is because the forums are threaded. You want to recieve a reply to a particular _message_ not just to the whole forum - otherwise how do you know what message the reply is for and therefore where in the thread of discussion to place the new post.

To allow the notifications package mail handling to work, you need a "catch all" email account for your domain where all the notification-??? addresses will end up - then notifications correctly handles them.

With qmail a catch all account is easy. If you use sendmail however, nothing is easy!

The notiofications package documentation really should reflect this stuff - I'm sure I remember reading it somewhere?

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8: Re: Re: ANN: Reply to a forum msg via email is ready (response to 7)
Posted by Orzenil Silva Junior on 06/03/05 05:14 AM
Nick Carrol wrote a tutorial about allow the notifications package mail handling with postfix on MacOs X here

http://www.weg.ee.usyd.edu.au/people/ncarroll/ref/postfix-howto

The original thread is here

https://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message_id=203904

As Mark said configuring qmail to handling incoming mail from forums reply is very easy and it works on default install of forums package.

I have a "catch all" account for my domain and create a file

/var/qmail/alias/.qmail-notification-default

with this one line content:

&service0@mydomain

i am supposing here catch all account for mydomain is service0@mydomain, there is a /home/service0/Maildir readable by the aolserver user and notifications package parameters are configured as in Nicks' tutorial

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9: Post to a forum via email using sendmail (response to 1)
Posted by Ryan Gallimore on 09/28/05 01:43 PM
Are there any docs out there describing how to use sendmail to reply to a forum via e-mail? All I've found so far are statements about it being difficult. Anyone succeeded with this?

Thanks in advance.