7.10.1 Unable to send mail as user without setting up *incoming* mail, and other Email setup issues.

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We use Google Apps for our email, with a Postfix gateway for all incoming and outgoing mail. In 7.8, users could send out email as themselves, but in 7.10.1, they cannot unless they configure incoming mail per user. We should not need to set this up for each user just so they can send out email. Even sent mail is handled by Postfix, which forwards it to the users Google email account when they send. We’ve disabled IMAP on the Google Apps domain for security reasons, so that is not an option.

Also, the checkbox “Allow users to use this account for outgoing email” only shows up when enabling SMTP authentication:

On top of this, when the checkbox is checked, the email address that is used for ‘From:’ is the username in the SMTP auth field. So, if your email system doesn’t use a full email address as the username, this won’t work at all:

This produces errors like this in the suitecrm.log file:

Fri Mar  9 10:08:35 2018 [3073][1][FATAL] SugarPHPMailer encountered an error: Invalid address:  (addAnAddress Reply-To): user
Fri Mar  9 10:08:35 2018 [3073][1][FATAL] SugarPHPMailer encountered an error: Invalid address:  (punyEncode) user
Fri Mar  9 10:08:35 2018 [3073][1][FATAL] SugarPHPMailer encountered an error: Invalid address:  (punyEncode) user
Fri Mar  9 10:08:35 2018 [3073][1][FATAL] SugarPHPMailer encountered an error: Invalid address:  (punyEncode) user

Users should be able to send email, as themselves, though the system’s email server without also setting up per-user incoming mail. I should not need to enable SMTP auth to allow users to send email. The email server should not be using the username as the ‘From:’ address.

I’m not sure where to begin to address these issues in the bug tracker. Using the username as the ‘From:’ address is pretty straightforward, but I don’t know what constraints, if any, led to the design decisions that are causing us the other issues.

PS. I hope this post doesn’t show up twice. The first time I tried posting it didn’t show up at all.

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Hi, welcome!

The first post from a new user has to be approved by a moderator, that’s why it wasn’t appearing. You won’t have any more problems in the future, this is just for new users (because of spam bots).

I will answer you post when I find the time today or tomorrow.

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Thanks pgr, I finally noticed the message about moderated posts when I did a ‘test’ post. Sorry for not noticing it. It doesn’t take up that much screen realestate on a 4k monitor.

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This is simply a bug: the usage of “from address” instead of “from name”.

I hope it is fixed with this, going into the next version:

This is a tricky one, because some email providers are starting to refuse sending unless the “from” and “from name” are correct. So I lobbyed for this here

Your case is a peculiar one: you are not a company who sends as “system” (simply) and you also don’t want user-specific settings. I never thought of this possibility, to be frank.

It is getting very rare to find an open, shared SMTP server. People have had several problems with SMTP Spammers

so locking down seems to be the way to go. But anyway I don’t know if that check-box really needs to be like that in SuiteCRM.

I’m open to ideas, let me hear your thoughts on all this. Thanks

5

This is simply a bug: the usage of “from address” instead of “from name”.
Oh, good! That’s one down!

This is a tricky one, because some email providers are starting to refuse sending unless the “from” and “from name” are correct.
Many do! However in our case we are our own email provider. Our in-house severs are the only ones that send DKIM signed and SPF listed email for our domains. Even our Google Apps accounts use the in-house servers as sending and receiving gateways.

Your case is a peculiar one: you are not a company who sends as “system” (simply) and you also don’t want user-specific settings. I never thought of this possibility, to be frank.
Just so we’re on the same page… System level messages (assignments, reminders, etc) will use the system level ‘from’ address. Email sent by users (to lead contacts, etc) will use the users ‘from’ address.
Email replies to these messages are picked up by SuiteCRM via another method that involves our mail servers bcc’ing the relevant messages to a mailbox that the system checks, although that’s not really important for this discussion. It works. :slight_smile:

It is getting very rare to find an open, shared SMTP server. People have had several problems with SMTP Spammers
Agreed! However our servers aren’t open, they’re just internal. They don’t need to use SMTP auth for email sent from inside the network.

I’ve done some testing. If I change the “Allow users to use this account for outgoing email” setting in the Database, sending an email can use that SMTP server. Also, if I use Chrome’s developer tools to change the value of the ‘from’ dropdown I can set the outgoing email address. So, this all works once the UI issues are resolved. I don’t think I’m missing anything.

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I’m glad you got things working, or at least worked-around :slight_smile:

I’ll keep this thread bookmarked for future email settings screens redesigns, some of these ideas can be useful.

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Just upgraded to 7.10.4 from 7.8.x and seem to be having the same issues as benjamin.long but wanted to check:

We previously had users send out emails, using templates, to clients through SuiteCRM. The system wasn’t used for any inbound email at all, purely just sending these predefined emails by clicking the email address of the client, picking a template, make any little tweaks and hit send. The process was simple and had multiple benefits including a degree of accountability as we could see at a glance which client, had been sent which emails, by which account manager, and when.

After upgrading we can now no longer send these emails, and the from field appears to be empty when we try. Does that sound like the same problem, and if so any suggestions.

Like benjamin.long we have our own mailservers and whilst SuiteCRM is a fantastic CRM system we don’t want it to handle all of our company email.

We just want to be able to send some emails through it, from our own mailserver, and have them show in the history. The alternative is sending the email from outside SuiteCRM and copy and paste them into the notes on an individual basis (an insane amount of unnecessary work I’m sure you’ll agree) and I would like to avoid this if possible.

Thanks for any ideas which would be much appreciated.

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to be able to attach the group email or system email to a user you need to install a personal email address to each new user. It can be the same email adress.
After this the go again to the setup logged in as a user and you can tick the folders and do some other tweaks.
The from name does not work. from is the email-address.

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thanks Kaeser49, I avoided this as we specifically don’t want inbound email coming through SuiteCRM and only want to use it for outbound. Does this mean we would have to let SuiteCRM receive inbound email as well or can this be disabled somehow ?

Thanks a lot

Andy

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Hi,

I don´t know the Details but it Needs dummy personal Emails to pull the trigger that group emails are shown in the setup of the user profiles. There you check a box to assign the group email to that user. I believe Outbound goes always trough system email account.
You can test if you can remove the dummy email after you have assigned the group email to the users.

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ok will give it a go, thanks for the help.

Andy

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Having spent days on this I am starting to wonder if I am totally misunderstanding the SuiteCRM email system.

We want to be able to send out generic template based emails to people who request information, with it looking as though the email came from whichever account manager sends it. For example if John Smith is logged in we want it to appear as though the email is coming from john.smith@domain.com and any replies will go to John.Smith@domain.com (but not via SuiteCRM though, as we don’t want any inbound email going into SuiteCRM). Just to be totally clear on that, we DO NOT want SuiteCRM to handle any inbound email, check for incoming email etc… this is all done outside of SuiteCRM and we want that to continue being the case.

This worked fine in the previous version (7.8.x) but since the upgrade a week or so back doesn’t seem to be working. Sent emails suddenly have no “replyto” address, and the “from” address which does show up is a send only account that we have setup specifically for this purpose, which doesn’t even allow incoming email through it.

Has the workflow now totally changed, and are you forced to have SuiteCRM check for inbound email just to be able to send emails out?

Sorry if I am being really thick here, but I just want to make sure I am not trying to do the impossible. Is there a way to force it to include a “reply to” address for each individual user when sending an email out?

Thanks a lot, and once again sorry if this is a daft question, but I am pulling my hair out here.

13

Guys, how are these issues progressing in terms of GitHub? I am following too many threads, and too many issues, and I need to make sure the most important things are present as GitHub Issues, and I can try to push up their priority, where appropriate.

I would like to focus only on things that are not fixed in 7.10.4 yet. Can you help me by listing GitHub issues here, or opening new ones when they are not reported yet?

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Ok this is my contribution to the weakest link in suitecrm: the email system. Most bugs are known since a long time and reported in the forum. I tried to make a fresh start from 7.10.4.
I trust that there have been development work since 7.10.0 but more in the background I believe. Even tough I appreciate any progress and I like suitecrm. I hope we can use it in the future.
@pgr: Please take care that this gets reported to the responsible person. I´m not the guy to put something into Github. I see that you contribute extremly often to the formun. Thank you!

Tested on Centos 7, PHP 7.2.4. Fresh 7.10.4 installation (no upgrade). Installation went trough smoothly.

First task: setup system email account.
Here I see a misleading information: The menu says Email settings. This is misleading. This should be somewhat as “system Email outbound settings or System Email”.
Add first email address and credentials -> test email, error: „no connection“, no log window
(I know it is working, see later).

Next steps:
Setup user account
Setup group mail account
System preselects inbound directory but not trash (I do it manually)
Check box “Allow users to send emails using the “From” Name”
Test settings -> works, this time ok message window is not partly hidden in screen
Save
Reopen inbound and group email account through admin menu
->Send test email still works (was a problem in earlier versions)
Logout as admin
Login as user
Open user profile
Open settings under email settings
 No group email account visible
Fill in “not working email address” used under system email settings in users email window and save it.
Reopen settings -> no emails (neither private nor group)
Add mail account (same as before filled in in user email section). Don´t understand why to add an email address on front page, which is after wards not shown under settings.
Choose email folders: Trash is mandatory but does not get filled in automatically as inbox does. Two questions marks (why to choose manually and why is trash mandatory and as example sent not). I have never installed an imap email where the folders where not taken automatically from the system. Any way.

Test settings -> works, this time ok message window is mostly hidden in screen (means different program files used in system inbox (why is this split?).
Set outgoing email account and add a smtp account (same as is not working und system email)
Send test email with as said “not working system email outbound account”. -> is working
the email sent to same email address as setup is arriving.
-> from name is coming from user name which is not desired I think
(why not choose the set “from name”?). This is major problem in all kind of emails.
now big surprise: group email account is visible in settings. I tick the “active box” and save and save

ok next step: as user I go to emails menu
personal and group email account incoming show up.
Bad things here:
 There is no difference between already read emails and not read emails. Big killer for a group email and also private email account where many people work with and not usual in imap behaviour.
 After choosen an email account it is not visible on which account we are working on. This is a problem if you monitor many group and personal email accounts.

Sending emails from private account:
Works to same email address as account but -> no from name (only email address)
 Email sent window should disappear automatically. Users expect that an email gets sent and they don´t want to click many hundred times a day a window away.
 The page in browser reloads completely with a white screen between and that is a strange behaviour and not good for the people using the system every day. Many flashes a day.

Sending from group email: works and it is performed through the system outgoing account (the one the admin cannot test due to rights problem).
I then went back to the system outgoing email and changed the smtp server to a false address.
sent again an email through group account which was reported as fail.
This is a proof, that the system outgoing email account is working even though an administrator sets it up but cannot send test email to check function.

I started to test some behaviour if I put in wrong email settings, credentials.
In personal account when testing email the message box is hidden behind the windows in the browser. You can blind back tab and enter but you can only imagine was is written. No error log window.
If you save the account there is now a test starting in the background. The answer is taking long and is misleading it says that you have to check your settings and imap field is outlined red. It has nothing to do with imap field though. I would not outline something if it’s not the field, which is wrong.

I am still convinced that a user in a crm system should not be able to change or create email account. At least there should be a way to allow or disallow such. Or a superuser functionality.

Now the other way round.
I log in as admin and go to user profile.
I open email settings. There is a pencil in user personal email imap but windows does not open.
I can open personal email outbound settings but cannot send email even though this is working as I now from user testing. There are rights problems.
If an admin cannot test system email settings and is able to open users personal email settings but has no rights to test then please think about what you want. Either let the user do all the settings and keep admin out or better give admin the rights to be admins. At least for the system account. In any case, there should be a clear message that the admin is not allowed to test. Otherwise he will lose to much time for findings errors which are no errors but misleading information.
In group email from name and from address is still mixed up. A bug which is long time known but not even this no brainer is solved.
In personal emails from name does never show. There it is not a mix up. The from name field is probably simply not used.

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I can confirm I am on 7.10.4, running PHP 5.6.34, on shared hosting, and have run 7.8.x in that environment for some time prior to the upgrade with no problems.

@pgr I have never used git before and am not a developer, so I suspect I’d probably cause more problems than I would fix.

FWIW the issues are all related to the email, and everything else seems to be working fine in what is otherwise a great product. At the moment we have people sending the emails from their own email clients and copying them across as notes, but that’s obviously not a viable solution longer term.

I’m more than happy to answer any questions that will help fix this, but just won’t be much help when it comes to the code unfortunately.

16

Could someone offer any ideas as I cannot get the SuiteCRM emails to work at all?

The outgoing TEST email works fine but when I attempt to send real emails I receive the following message: Error sending email. Please contact your administrator for assistance.

Additionally at this point the system logs me out.

I am using Windows10, XAMPP7.2.4 and SuiteCRM 7.10.4 installed on a laptop (i.e. no server).

I have enabled extension=php_imap.dll and openssl in PHP.

I have also created a User account and a Group email Account in addition to the Admin account and defined mail accounts for both outgoing and incoming email. I have tried this for both Outlook and gmail accounts.

Any assistance would be gratefully received. Please note that I am not an IT expert.

17

@suitepie that getting logged out issue sounds just like this one

https://github.com/salesagility/SuiteCRM/issues/5692

which is already fixed but will only be on the next release. You can try the fix manually if you’re technical enough for that. If you do, please comment there telling how it went.

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@kaesar49 I think this Issue is one of the things you mention

https://github.com/salesagility/SuiteCRM/issues/5749

To everyone: it’s really easy to open Issues on GitHub. It doesn’t require you to really know Git or GitHub in its entirety. It’s just a bug report. So I encourage you to ask things here on the forums first, but also keep an eye on what is open there, and open Issues when they’re missing.

Github issues are what drives our developer team. If it isn’t there, it won’t be fixed. Thanks for all your reports which will be really useful.

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Thank you pgr for your very quick reply, help and directions to a partially similar issue, which I have read. The problem that I experience is not being able to send an email in the first place so I am a step behind the issue of receiving a response and replying to it. I have reinstalled SuiteCRM but still experience the initial problem.

I wonder if it might be an issue with something other than SuiteCRM which is causing the block, for example PHP (although I have enabled the IMAP and SSL extensions within PHP as advised by another SuiteCRM Forum member).

I also get many many “Illegal String Offset” and “Array to String Conversion” messages upon install but do not think that should affect emails.

I will keep trying but perhaps I should wait for the next SuiteCRM enhancement release.

Do you think I should try an earlier version of SuiteCRM to see if that would help?

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@suitepie you should turn off display_errors in your php.ini. This will remove errors from the screen, you can still check them in the logs. Sometimes this actually fixes bugs because the output of these errors at unexpected moments might break a screen.

7.10.5. is about to come out this week and it fixes several (though not all) known email issues. I would try that first.

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