Setting up Service Desk (G Suite/Google Apps)

So, I’ve been able to enable Service Desk for my self-hosted.

Instructions weren’t clear in the docs, but I found a very quick and simple tutorial on YouTube; that does the trick.

Now, I’ve got a few issues.

Considering that the incoming email address would be “service-desk”, and for each project “service-desk+[name]-[id]-issue”, do I need to create an email service-desk@ ?

I’ve tried with G-Suite Groups (email group/alias) as well as regular email alias.
The trouble with this is that any emails sent to me (quin452@) sends an error back to the sender saying it cannot be found.

It seems that emails being sent also get sent to service-desk@ when belonging to a Service Desk group, or having service-desk@ as an alias.
I should note, having service-desk@ as an alias for the Group does nothing (I got errors of “address cannot be found”).

So someone emails me with quin452@, and then get an error saying that service-desk@ cannot be found, when there is some form of alias there.

If I do need to use a separate mail box, how can I get notifications on new issues/tickets being submitted? Do I need to connect to that inbox, like any other?
Can I automate notifications to myself?

The fact that I cannot get all the notifications I want (like watching an entire board for any updates, for example) isn’t ideal.

I’m assuming that any aliases used would cause the same issue (i.e. gitlab@ and service-desk@ - if someone emailed gitlab@, they’d get the same error as before).

To help me understand, what are you trying to achieve? One single address to catch all service desk e-mails? Like service-desk@

As example our setup for service desk is a group for labeling the project service desk (service-accounting@, service-managers), and the service desk mails (service-desk+[name]-[id]-issue@) as member of his respective group:
service-desk+accounting-issue member of service-accounting@

Thanks for the reply.

I’m currently using a separate inbox; service-desk@ This uses the sub-addressed to assign the tickets just fine.
I am wondering if this is the only way.

Could I use a separate inbox per project (service-desk+project-1-issue@, +project-2-issue@, etc.) and use aliases project1@, project2@ so it’s a more user-friendly experience for my clients?

Also, with the notifications system, I do believe I have set my notifications for “watch everything” (I’ve forgotten the actual name) so I do get new emails when an issue is submitted, but would each developer need to “watch all” for the projects their working on (so dev1 will get emails from client1 about project1)?

I also have the gitlab@ alias assigned to my own email (me@), so any emails being sent to gitlab@ come to me (not that is ever should), I use my own email for SMTP authentication to send (and sends as/From field is gitlab@), but use the service-desk@ details for the incoming (as according to the guides).
Is this correct?

I’m using G-Suite/Google Workspace, and it’s not the clearest nor most robust.

Using aliases no, but with groups, you can. Create a group project1@ and then add service-desk+project-1-issue@ as a member of this group. Your clients will send emails to project1@ and it will be caught by the service desk.

Notification settings can be set at the global level or per-project level, on the project home page, if the user sets the custom notification New issue, the Gitlab Bot will send an email to notify every new issue on that project.

Separate accounts will give you more flexibility. A dedicated email account for Gitlab instance service-desk@, to receive and send emails is the only requirement for this setup.

To receive all notifications, I suggest the global notification option New issue, or per project settings.

Thanks for the information; that has helped a great deal.

So essentially it comes down to having a separate inbox/account per project and that being a part of a group in order to have user-friendly emails.
Or using the one “catch-all”/subaddress email like Gitlab recommends (but no option to make these user-friendly).

It has really helped me to come up with solutions, and give me a clear path in moving forward :slight_smile: