Issue submission through email

The Issue-submission-through-email feature allows you to submit new issues by sending an issue as email to a dedicated email address. This email is then processed by an external script and then pushed into the corresponding PloneCollectorNG instance.

Requirements:

PloneCollectorNG V 1.2.0 or higher
Python 2.3.3 or higher for smtp2pcng.py

Attention:

This feature is still experimental and not very well tested. Use it at your own risk.

Installation:

Zope/Plone side:

create a new user XXX on the Plone level (in acl_users) with Manager role
go to configuration of your PloneCollectorNG instance and click on the Email configuration
Enable/disable incoming issue submissions through email (choises: disabled, staff, staff+authenticated members, anyone)
adjust the email address to the address that will be used as official address for this PCNG instance Every PCNG instance must have its own dedicated email address. You can not reuse a single address for multiple PCNG instances!

Mailserver side:

The smtp2pcng.py gateway does not have to be installed on the same machine as the Zope server. The gateway talks to the Zope server through HTTP. Assuming that the official address for a PCNG instances is [email protected] you should ensure that all incoming emails for this address is processed by smtp2pcng.py. The most common method is to use procmail. See the procmail documentation for installation details.

The sample configuration file .smtp2pcng.cfg should be copied to the $HOME of your account where the emails are processed.

For each PCNG instances you have to add a dedicated section inside the config file:

        ####################################################
        # global settings for all PloneCollectorNG instances
        ####################################################

        [default]
        # Maximum length of an incoming emails
        maxlength=32768

        ####################################################
        # an example section
        ####################################################

        [PloneCollectorNG]
        # URL called to submit new issues
        url = http://localhost:8080/plone_trackers/PloneCollectorNG/issue_from_xml 
        # Manager credentials     
        username=ajung
        password=niewiederdummefragen

Incoming email can be processed by smtp2pcng.py as:

          cat mailfile | smtp2pcng.py  -C PloneCollectorNG 

          or 

          smtp2pcng.py -C PloneCollectorNG -f mailfile

The gateway script can either read from a file or through a pipe from standard input.
URL parameter, username and password can also be specified through the commandline. smtp2pcng.py --help is your friend.
The result of the email processing is logged to standard output and the logfile smtp2pcng.log.

...to be continued...