Email into a channel

A text channel can have its own secret email address. Mail sent to it is posted in the channel by the Email bot, with its subject, text and attachments.

Use it for prayer-request or announcement intake, newsletters, and alerts from systems that can only send email.

Before you start

• Plans. Available on every plan (Free: 2 addresses per org, Ministry and Creator: 10, Business: 50).
• Who. The channel's Manage channel permission, or the Manage integrations permission (Owners, Admins, or a custom role that grants it). Members never see the address.
• Text channels only. Never a direct message, group chat, personal channel, meal train or voice channel. A channel has at most one address.

Needs setup on the server. Email-in appears only when the server's operator has set up an inbound mail domain. Until then, the channel menu has no email item. On the hosted service, ask us at [email protected]; on your own server, see the self-hosting configuration guide.

Make an address

1. Open the channel's ⋯ menu → Email address for this channel.
2. Optionally fill in Who may send (see Sender allowlist).
3. Choose Make an email address, then Copy it. Keep it private: anyone who has it can post, unless you list who may send.

An address looks like this:

[email protected]

The part after the channel name is the secret. Ramphearth matches the whole address exactly; a +tag after it is ignored. If the server can't show the full address again later, the dialog says so: copy it right away, or regenerate it to get a new one.

On a phone you can see and copy the address and its deliveries; making and changing it is done on a computer.

Every address in the org is also listed (masked) under Org Settings → Integrations → Email-in, where people with Manage integrations can pause or turn any of them off.

What arrives

Each message becomes one post from the Email bot (with a BOT badge):

• The subject is the card's title.
• The body is the post. A plain-text part is used as is; an HTML-only message is turned into the chat's Markdown subset (bold, italics, links, quotes and lists). HTML is never shown, remote images are never loaded and javascript: links are dropped.
• Trimming. Quoted replies ("On … wrote:", Outlook's header block, "-----Original Message-----"), the -- signature and "Sent from my iPhone" are trimmed when there's something above them. Forwarded mail is kept whole. A body longer than 16,000 characters is cut.
• The author's name is the sender's. A verified sender who is a member of the org shows with their own profile name; anyone else shows with the From name, with "(email)" added if it would pass for a member's.
• The footer reads "Email from <address> · sender verified" or "· sender not verified".
• Attachments are stored like any upload, encrypted at rest, and count toward the org's storage: images, video, audio, PDF, plain text, CSV, calendar files, Office documents, zip and gzip, up to 10 per message, each within your plan's upload size. Anything else (programs, SVG, HTML…) is listed under the post as Not attached, with the reason. Inline images such as signature logos are left out.
• Mentions are inert. @everyone in an email notifies nobody. Link previews aren't made. The post otherwise notifies as any post in the channel does.

What is dropped or refused

Dropped (accepted, so the sending server doesn't retry, but not posted):

• Bounces and delivery reports.
• Automatic replies, such as out-of-office messages.
• Mail loops: more than 30 relay hops, or mail that came from the inbound domain itself.

Mailing lists are fine.

Refused (the sending server is told no):

• A message over 10 MB.
• Mail that fails its sender's DMARC check.
• Mail from a sender who isn't on the address's allowlist, or is on it but couldn't be verified.
• Mail to an address that is paused, turned off or regenerated away.

Verified senders

Ramphearth checks SPF, DKIM and DMARC on each message. A sender is verified when DMARC passes, or when the sender's domain has no DMARC policy and an aligned SPF or DKIM check passes. Only verified mail can match an allowlist or be shown under a member's own name.

Sender allowlist

Who may send takes email addresses or whole domains, one per line:

[email protected]
@church.org

With a list, a message is posted only when its From address is on it and the mail is verified, so a forged From line can't get through. Without a list, anyone who has the address can post. Change the list later and choose Save senders.

Pause, regenerate, turn off

In the channel's Email address for this channel dialog:

Recent deliveries

The dialog lists the last 50 deliveries: the sender, the outcome (Posted, Already posted, Not posted, Refused or Slowed down), the SPF / DKIM / DMARC results and why anything was refused. It never shows the subject or body. Mail sent to a wrong or old address isn't listed.

What data moves

• Nothing leaves Ramphearth: email-in only receives. It never sends, forwards or replies to mail.
• Stored: the post (subject, trimmed body, the sender's name and address in the footer) and its attachments, like any other message: searchable, and encrypted at rest where the org encrypts content.
• Delivery log: for each of the last 50 deliveries, the sender's address, the outcome and the authentication results. Never the subject or body.
• The secret part of the address is stored only as a hash (and the full address encrypted, so managers can see it again). Changes to addresses are in the org's audit log, never with the secret.

Limits

• Messages: up to 10 MB each.
• Per address: 10 messages a minute and 120 an hour.
• Per sending server: 60 messages a minute to any address.
• Over a limit, the sending server is told to try again later, so mail is delayed, not lost.
• Duplicates: the same message (by its Message-ID) is posted once, even if it's retried or arrives twice within 24 hours.
• Addresses per org: Free 2, Ministry and Creator 10, Business 50. One per channel.

Troubleshooting