Request to fix the email problem
Hi @KajMagnus
As you know, lots of users end up responding to forum emails because they believe their response will end up with us.
You've been manually forwarding this to us.
As our user base grows, that's unsustainable for you - and for us.
Those forwards bypasses all of our inbox automation, so it means we spend way too much time on dealing with these emails. With our expected huge growth in the fall, this could become very unmanageable very quickly if we don't find a way to fix it soon.
From our perspective, the best implementation would be that there's an autoresponder at the no-reply email you're sending from, that would simply reply to the user sending the email that their email won't be read.
Longer term, of course, you could implement some parsing logic etc. that makes it into an actual reply on the forum. But in my opinion, that is not necessary, and such an implementation would likely take very long and be very prone to errors / different reply-formattings in various email clients etc.
Would it be possible to set up an auto-responder at the no-reply address without making it too complex?
- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
It also might be worth it to look at the formatting of the emails sent from Talkyard to see if it can be made more visual/clearer that they can't reply to them.
KajMagnus @KajMagnus2021-05-30 16:35:51.187ZThere could be a big colorful "Reply" button that is in fact a link to the post, over at the forum.
Bigger than the Reply button in the email client :- )- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
That sounds like a good idea :)
In reply tochrscheuer⬆:KajMagnus @KajMagnus2021-05-30 16:39:25.722Z2021-06-04 11:19:12.385ZI've had a look at Amazon SES and Postmarkapp, and I didn't see any quick way to configure automatic replies (autoresponder). (Unlike with personal email, e.g. Gmail, then it's quick & simple, right.)
What's on my mind right now, is to listen to Postmarkapp webhooks / API, and then send an email back to the person who tried to reply via email. — This shouldn't be that much work. And later, when supporting other email services, or having an incoming email handler in its own container as part of Talkyard, then, some of that work would already have been done.
- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
Gotcha, thanks for looking into this. This sounds like a good idea.
Only thing I would say to look out for is to make sure it doesn't go into loops (if the user you're sending to has an auto-reply) - so maybe the reply-to address from the email you're sending in return to their reply should be a different, even more nonono-reply address. That would ensure there are no loops, while still providing the user with a response.
- KajMagnus @KajMagnus2021-06-04 11:18:59.807Z
make sure it doesn't go into loops
Yes, good point. There's going to be a flag in the database, so one can reply just once. And the "you can't reply" info email, wouldn't be possible to reply to.
I'd think this'll be fixed in about 3 weeks — the next version will include an incoming emails webhooks endpoint that just logs to a log file, and the next-next version might send a "you can't reply" email.
- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
Awesome! Thank you :)
- In reply tochrscheuer⬆:KajMagnus @KajMagnus2021-06-10 09:15:34.597Z
Status update: Now the incoming email webhook that just logs to a log file, works.
Now I'm adding a reply-to unique random value in theFrom:SMTP header so Talkyard knows who's trying to reply:From: no-reply+UNIQUE_VALUE@talkyard.example.com.- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
WOHOOOO
- In reply tochrscheuer⬆:KajMagnus @KajMagnus2021-08-06 04:41:07.653Z
Hi Christian, now you can try this out here at Ty .io — if you reply to the email notification about this message, then, you should get an email that says:
You cannot reply via email. Instead, go here:
and check your reply notifications
(Hmm, unfortunately that "cannot reply" email message, creates a separate email thread — presumably because Ty generates a different +HASH for that new email. I'll change this so it'll be the same hash, then, should end up in the same email thread as the one one posted the won't-work reply in. Then, one can just scroll up in the same email thread, and find the blue "Reply" button.)
I guess the "cannot-reply" email can be improved, be made simpler to understand. Maybe it could say "Scroll up and click the blue Reply button instead" (once the +HASH is the same, see above)
- CChristian Scheuer @chrscheuer
Great!
I don't receive email notifications from the forums any longer as I personally prefer to check in when I have time :)
You cannot reply via email. Instead, go here:
https://www.talkyard.io
and check your reply notificationsCould this be changed to something more personal/welcoming? We've found that when reporting "errors" to users, it matters how we phrase things.
Something like:It looks like you may have tried to reply to one of the notification emails we sent out from our forum. Unfortunately, our system doesn't support answering forum posts via email. To answer the post, please click the blue Reply button or the forum link in the original email (or click here). This is an automated message - and you can't reply to this either :)Where "click here" would also link them to the post.
- KajMagnus @KajMagnus2021-08-12 15:07:30.426Z
Something like that sounds more friendly. Thanks. I'll fix. (I was planning to include a reply link in the cannot-reply-via-email email, just didn't get to it yet, until now)
- Progresswith handling this problem