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Akeeba Ticket System

#33384 Fetch email plugin not processing emails

Posted in ‘Akeeba Ticket System for Joomla! 4 & 5’
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Environment Information

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PHP version
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Akeeba Ticket System version
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Latest post by SatIntAKB on Wednesday, 15 July 2020 03:45 CDT

Monday, 13 July 2020 14:17 CDT

SatIntAKB

Hello, 

We have discovered a problem with the fetch email plugin on our server.

Our production server has recently been upgraded in the following way. 

  • Joomla version 3.7.4 to version 3.9.19
  • PHP version 5.5.30 to version 7.2.31
  • Akeeba Ticket system version 2.4.3 to version 3.3.1


We have decided to update Akeeba Ticket system only to 3.3.1 (and not 3.4.1) because of two bugs we found which were reported a short while ago in ticket #33339. The latest dev release fixed the bugs but we chose not to use this on a live server as we need stability. The nearest stable version not affected by those two bugs is 3.3.1. 

I have attached a screenshot of how I have configured the fetch email plugin to connect to our support mailbox running on Office 365. The mailfetch cron has also been created and is running every 5 minutes. 

However emails in our support mailbox are not being processed. They remain in the mailbox untouched and the contents are not copied into the corresponding ticket. The username and password of the mailbox have been triple checked (as have the connection details for Office 365 IMAP) and are all correct. I have also tried setting "Validate certificates" to No. The emails are less than 24 hours old (just in case there's a time limit on how old an email can be for it to be processed). 

To make sure no issue exists with the cron job I have also tried using the URL version of the cron in my browser. This returns an "OK" message but the emails in the mailbox are not processed. 

Any help would be very much appreciated. 

Thank you in advance,
Dale

Edited by on 2020-08-12 17:45 CDT

Tuesday, 14 July 2020 01:34 CDT

nicholas

Your issue is unsurprising and why I made version 3.4.0 in the first place. Microsoft and Google had announced that come July 1st, 2020 they would deprecate some older connection methods to their mail servers. This meant that the PHP IMAP module, the way that all versions of ATS up to and including 3.3.1 fetched emails, would likely stop working. This is what prompted me to drop everything and replace it with Horde IMAP for version 3.4.0. This was a complicated process that took a couple of months.

So, yes, I am aware of the nature of that problem and I already fixed it in 3.4.0. I am aware that 3.4.0 and 3.4.1 had some bugs, two of which you reported yourself.

The solution to your issue is to use the latest version of our software. Given the issues you reported, you should use the dev release we asked you to use. If you do not want to use it you will have to wait for version 3.4.2.

Also note that the dev release we asked you to use is the same code as what will be released as 3.4.2 today. Whenever we build a dev release and ask you to install it on a live site the code is at a point where we feel comfortable to release it right then and there.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Tuesday, 14 July 2020 04:11 CDT

SatIntAKB

Hi Nicholas,

Thank you for explaining everything - it makes sense. 

I saw that you just released 3.4.2 which I have installed onto our website. The upgrade went smoothly and I received no installation errors. 

Strangely the exact same issue is happening - emails are not taken from our mailbox and added to tickets.

I'm not sure if it helps at all - but if I enter a completely made up password for our Office 365 account in the fetch email plugin and press save I don't receive any authentication errors. And if I run the cron URL I get an OK message back. 

Kind regards,
Dale

Wednesday, 15 July 2020 01:06 CDT

nicholas

The output of the CRON URL is always OK. If you receive anything else it means that we either got an unhandled error or that Joomla or PHP itself crashed. So the fact that you see OK is good.

You can find the email fetch log in Akeeba Ticket System, Reports, View Logs. Choose the Email Processing log.

If there is not enough information there you can try setting Debug Site to Yes in your Global Configuration. This increases the verbosity level of the log.

If you see an authentication issue you need to first consider if you can use the exact same credentials to access that mailbox with Mozilla Thunderbird. If it goes through an OAuth login screen then the answer is that no, you cannot use IMAP to access that mailbox (probably it has Two Factor Authentication enabled). If you can access it over IMAP I would also try toggling the Use TLS options in Akeeba Ticket System.

Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos

Lead Developer and Director

🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!

Edited by nicholas on 2020-07-15 01:06 CDT

Wednesday, 15 July 2020 03:45 CDT

SatIntAKB

I was able to access the mailbox successfully using Mozilla Thunderbird. I tried setting "Use TLS" to "Never" and this resolved the problem. Emails are now successfully imported. 

Thank you very much for all your help.

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