OSTicket 1.17.x and proper filtering of email

sushpep

Hi OSTicket Team and other forum members,

Good day!

Would just like to ask if there's any documentation or workaround related to what we are encountering after an upgrade to OSTicket 1.17.x (tried this on 1.17 and 1.17.1 but will be upgrading to 1.17.2 on Monday)

Our issue is as follows:
Emails that arrive in the inbox that do not match the email address setup are now filtered into the default department, which is "Support", and uses the tickets for the "Support" department and is therefore not readable by the actual teams that need access to it. We therefore have emails being received by this otherwise inactive department from multiple email addresses and sometimes cannot tell where the emails originated from.

We encounter this specifically in several cases:
a. The email address used to send to us is an alias instead of the actual email configured in OSTicket
b. Related to a., is if the email arrives to us due to being sent to the group that our email is part of.
c. Our email address is in the BCC of the email

Formerly (OSTicket 1.14.x), all three cases would result in a ticket being created in the proper department where the email is assigned to. This is a straight OSTicket upgrade and we have not changed any settings aside from getting OAUTH2 to run.

Would like to ask if you would have any suggested fix or current workaround for the issue. If there is any additional info needed, we will be happy to provide.

Thank you so much! 🙂

KevinTheJedi

sushpep

There is no system email in the header to match on so it will go to default department. You can add the alias(es) as a system email and don’t configure Remote Mailbox/Outgoing. Simply add the email and configure the Department.

Cheers.

sushpep

KevinTheJedi

Thank you! How would you suggest handling email where we are included in the bcc?

pcjkollmorgen

Unfortunately there is no workaround other than adding each of the aliases as an email in OsTicket setting. You don't need to add any remote fetching/email collection settings, you can simply choose department and/or help topic.

I agree it makes your case b and c harder to work with now.

KevinTheJedi

sushpep

If a system email BCC'ed then we intentionally “passively thread” as in we are just listening to the conversation. I can’t remember off the top of my head if the alerts go out but I doubt it since it’s passive.

Cheers.

sushpep

KevinTheJedi

Thanks. On previous versions of OSTicket though, bcc'd emails would still be filtered properly into the correct departments. Is there any way we could retain this functionality?

Thank you! :]

KevinTheJedi

sushpep

I will check and see.

Cheers.

sushpep

Hello and good day!

Would just like to ask if there would be any current change lined up or any workaround for this?

Thank you!! 🙂

TLDR of Issue:
Messages that arrive to a mailbox via a bcc or an alias are no longer sorted into the proper topic/team/department and go to the 'default' topic.

Impact:
Emails that are bunched in the default topic that arrive via bcc can no longer be sorted if the organization has multiple email addresses using OSTicket, or must be manually re-sorted if the email arrives via an alias. This also means that groups that use OSTicket must be granted access to the 'default' topic in order to scan and filter email that could potentially be theirs.

KevinTheJedi

sushpep

This was addressed with:

https://github.com/osTicket/osTicket/pull/6400

Cheers.

sushpep

KevinTheJedi

Will look into this. Many thanks!

sushpep

KevinTheJedi

Hi, just to update:

We updated to 1.17.2 yesterday and made the changes as suggested in the patch.

We can confirm that aliases are now working for the emails received in the mailboxes.

Unfortunately, BCC'd emails are still entering the default topic. Would it be possible to look into this?

Thank you very much! 🙂

ntozier

I'm curious how you would sort a BCCed email... since BCC isn't an email header.
The email will be in the Delivered-To: field though.

sushpep

ntozier

Hi, Sorry, missed this reply.

We'd usually sort them based on the email address these were delivered to.

Prior to 1.17 (we were running 1.14/1.15 and tested 1.16), these would just show up in the proper topic based on the email address these were delivered to. This is the default behavior and we were able to run with this very well.

Since 1.17 though, yes you are correct -we are no longer able to sort through BCC'd emails and these must be done manually and compared to their individual Office365 mailbox since they are all dumped into our 'default topic'.

These kinds of emails are getting more frequent, for example customers announcing to all their related entities about some new policy changes but do not want to show the names/email addresses of all these entities - hence these are done via BCC.

We could provide some logs or examples if necessary. Thank you! 🙂

KevinTheJedi

sushpep

You need to upgrade to v1.17.2 and apply these:

Cheers.

sushpep

KevinTheJedi

Thanks! We applied 6400 the last time as you suggested, but will try 6399 and 6381 and revert back. We are already currently on 1.17.2 as well. Thanks! 🙂

sushpep

KevinTheJedi

Hi, just to report back - we applied the three pull numbers on our current 1.17.2 and the BCCs are still not currently being delivered to the proper help topics. Is there anything else we could try?

Thanks! 🙂

KevinTheJedi

sushpep

Not at the moment, no.

Cheers.