Burnsoft_Tech My email addresses for my website are created via cPanel. But it looks like OST creates it's own email addresses too. Do I need to create corresponding email addresses in cPanel to match the email addresses that are in OST? Or do they function completely separately?
osTicket does not create email addresses. You would use your mailserver (or front end to your mailserver such as CPanel, or other interface) to create your accounts and email addresses. You would then use those email addresses (Accounts) in osTicket.
Burnsoft_Tech Is that what email piping is for? I've never heard of email piping before. Also, how does the system work if I DON'T use piping? Does that mean users will just have to sign in to the portal to see their tickets?
There are two ways to get emails from an account into osTicket. They are Piping and Polling.
Piping is when the mail server pipes (delivers) the email message directly to the application. This is done by the mail server and some mail servers do not support it (such as Exchange). This way can be a sightly faster to get the emails into osTicket, and means you do not have to schedule polling.
Polling is when you configure email accounts in osTicket to use an email protocol (POP or IMAP) to connect to the mail server and collect any emails sent to said account (email address). To trigger the collection process you need to use a task scheduler (such as cron or Microsoft Task Scheduler) to run the cron.php which is included with the product.
note: If you are not capable of using a task scheduler (cron/MS Task Scheduler) there is the alternative of using the /scripts/rcron.php file and an API key to utilize a third party task scheduler to run it for you.
Regardless of the method that you choose the User experience will be the same. Users will get emails from the system that they can respond to, or they can log into the UI to see their tickets and respond to them.
Burnsoft_Tech So I just tried sending an email to support@mycompany. The email address exists in OST but not in my webhost cPanel, so the message came back as 505 Undeliverable. How do I make it so that support@mycompany is a functional email address, which will either create tickets from new email threads, or update existing tickets with replies on existing email threads? I guess that's what piping is for? Does support@mycompany have to exist in my host cPanel, or OST, or both?
You would have to make the email address (account) exist on your mailserver (in this case it sounds like you would achieve that by setting it up in CPanel). The support@mycompany.tld address would have to exist in CPanel, and then you would configure it in osTicket.
Burnsoft_Tech I currently have the settings configured so that users have to create an account in the portal before they can open tickets. Does email piping circumvent this? What happens if they send an email and piping is enabled, but they haven't created an account in the portal yet?
Honestly, I have never used piping in my 10+ years of using this product and I am not sure. I think that it would depend on your settings in osTicket. More specifically it would depend on if you have Admin panel -> Emails -> Settings: Accept All Emails: checked.
Burnsoft_Tech Also what's the difference between piping and polling? I'm guessing polling automatically checks a mailbox and any new emails are turned into tickets? But isn't that what piping already does?
I think that I already answered this above, but if you feel I did not then please let me know and I will try to answer it differently.
Burnsoft_Tech I may have more questions if I run into anything else that I'm not grasping. Thanks in advance!
Ask away. 🙂
