How to solve duplicated issue from incoming emails for customer care?

How to Use GitLab System Administration
1

We are using our self hosted Github not only for development but also for our customer care servier.

Incoming messages are sometimes created from incoming emails with duplicates, even more than 1 duplicate with a time shift of some minutes.

Also returned emails by customer can’t be assigned to the original ticket.

Any ideas, what we can do?

2

I assume you are using the Service Desk feature in GitLab? Can you share more details how it is configured, and how incoming mails result in duplicates. Also, which version of GitLab is involved. Thanks!

3

Hello,

Gitlab version is 16.1 but we have had this issue even on 15.x.
The service desk is configured to fetch emails from our strato email address:

gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_enabled’] = true
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_address’] = “email+%{key}@domain”
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_email’] = “…”
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_password’] = “…”
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_mailbox_name’] = “inbox”
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_idle_timeout’] = 60
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_log_file’] = “/var/log/gitlab/mailroom/mail_room_json.log”
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_host’] = “imap.strato.de”
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_port’] = 993
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_ssl’] = true
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_start_tls’] = false
gitlab_rails[‘service_desk_email_expunge_deleted’] = true

4

The issue still exists. We cleaned up the message queue, but if we restart service center, it creates multiple tickets and multiple emails to customers.

Suggestions for solutions are welcome, including suggestions for professional services.

5

Hey @wurzer and @dine.sh :wave:

can you please try to use the Service Desk address that’s generated from the incoming_email address? You can find it in the general settings of your project. Expand the “Service Desk” section and find “Emails sent to email address are also supported”.

  1. Does an email to this address also create two tickets?
  2. When you reply to the thank_you email after ticket creation, does that add a comment on the ticket?
  3. Do you receive any Service Desk emails twice?

service_desk_email is basically an additional alias email for Service Desk and all features are also available using the incoming_email. I want to investigate whether there’s something wrong with service_desk_email.

Another thought: Did you set up any email forwarding for incoming_email or service_desk_email?

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6

BTW, we released custom email address for Service Desk in 16.4 in beta. Maybe you want to try this feature out after we resolved this issue. See the documentation and an overview video.

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