Email to issue & channel

Every project and channel can have its own email address. Forward a bug report, cc the address on a customer thread, or point a monitoring tool at it: each email lands in Deckbell without anyone copying and pasting.

Email to issue

Open a project's Settings → Email to issue and choose Create email address. You get an address like inbox+web-k3j9x2m4qa@in.deckbell.com; use Copy to put it on the clipboard.

Each email sent to it becomes a new issue in the board's first column:

• the subject becomes the title (leading Re: and Fwd: are dropped)
• the body becomes the description, with formatting such as bold text, lists and links kept; remote images and scripts are removed
• attachments are added to the issue, and pictures pasted into the email show up in the description
• the sender is matched to a workspace member by the email address on their Deckbell account, once Deckbell has verified the email really came from that address (see Verified and unverified senders). A member becomes the issue's creator and watches it. Anyone else is shown by name and address, marked as not a workspace member.

Replies become comments

When someone replies to an email that created an issue (keeping the address in the conversation), the reply is added to that issue as a comment, with just the new text: the quoted history and email signatures are left out. Attachments on the reply are added to the comment.

Each issue also has its own address. Find it under Reply by email on the issue page; anything sent there becomes a comment on that issue.

Email to channel

Open a channel, choose Channel details from the channel menu, and under Email to channel choose Create email address. Each email to it is posted in the channel with its subject in bold and its attachments, and replies to that email go into the message's thread. Posts by email show the sender's name with an email tag (email · external for people outside your workspace, email · unverified sender when the sender couldn't be verified).

Verified and unverified senders

Anyone can type any address into an email's From line, so Deckbell checks each email before it trusts who sent it. An email is from a verified sender when it carries a valid DKIM signature from the domain in its From address (Gmail, Outlook, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace and most other mail services add one to every email automatically). Only a verified sender is matched to a workspace member.

An email that isn't verified (no signature, a signature from a different domain, or a message changed after it was signed) is from an unverified sender:

• it is never treated as coming from the member with that address, even if the From line shows a member's address
• on an address that accepts Anyone, it still becomes an issue, comment or channel post, shown with an amber email · unverified sender tag (hover it for details); treat its contents with care, it may be forged
• on Workspace members only and Members and allowed domains addresses it is refused, and the sender gets a bounce saying Deckbell could not verify that the email was sent by their address

If a member's emails show up as unverified, their mail provider isn't signing mail for their domain: ask whoever runs that domain's email to turn on DKIM.

Who can send

Admins choose who may email a channel's address; for a project's address, anyone who can manage projects can. The options are:

• Anyone: any sender, useful for customer support.
• Workspace members only: only verified senders whose address belongs to an active member.
• Members and allowed domains: members, plus verified senders at the domains you list, such as customer.com.

Turn Receive email off to stop accepting mail for a while; senders get a bounce. If an address starts getting spam, choose New address: the old address (and, for projects, the old issue reply addresses) stops working.

Limits and spam

• Emails can be up to 25 MB. Attachments larger than your workspace's upload limit, or beyond 20 per email, are skipped and noted in the delivery log.
• Automatic replies (such as out-of-office), bounces and mail marked as spam are refused, so two systems can't email each other in a loop.
• The same email is only handled once, even if it arrives twice or was sent to the address and cc'd to it.
• Each address accepts a limited number of emails per hour, overall and per sender. Mail over the limit bounces with a "try again later" message.
• Mail that fails its sender's own anti-spoofing checks (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) is refused before it reaches Deckbell.
• If Deckbell is briefly unavailable, incoming email is kept and delivered as soon as it's back (it is retried for up to a week), so senders don't get a bounce because of us.

Delivery log and audit log

Under Recent emails, the people who manage the address see the last 25 emails to the address: who sent them, what they became (with the issue key), or why they were refused. Turning an address on or off, changing who can send and creating a new address are recorded in Settings → Audit log.