JIRA mail server with Exchange

[Sujit Sawant]

Hi Team,

Configuring Mail Exchange Server in JIRA for sending & receiving notification ?

What is the process of Configuration exchange server ?

Thanks & Regard

SUJIT SAWANT (AISL)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist- · Accepted solution]

Oddly, the documentation covers this:

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA044/Configuring+JIRA+to+Send+SMTP+Mail

https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA044/Configuring+JIRA+to+Receive+POP+or+IMAP+Mail

You'll need to decide what to do with incoming mail as well - start at https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Creating+Issues+and+Comments+from+Email

[Scott Genevish]

Actually that doesn't cover it.  Exchange does not support POP or IMAP out of the box.  Is there a way to receive email from an Exchange server?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Yes, enable standard POP or IMAP on the Exchange server. (Ideally IMAPS for security) MAPI is not supported because it's proprietary and expensive (and from what I've been told, insecure - worse than IMAP)

[GC]

I'd really like to get this to work with Exchange using MAPI. We can't enable POP or IMAP on our exchange server, because we don't administer it and are legally bound to our email provider by state law. We do exchange integration quite regularly and polling exchange for emails is straight-forward (even if it is proprietary). Do you know if it would it be possible for us to build a plugin to enable Exchange as a confluence inbox?

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

It is possible to build an add-on, but you'll need to pay Microsoft for the rights to use the protocol in your code. That's why Atlassian hasn't done it, it costs too much.

[Michael Culley]

We have the same issue. Working for a large company I can't exactly phone up IT and ask them to flick on IMAP or POP.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Also, you can't phone up a supplier and ask them to write a batch of code to avoid you needing to make that call to IT.  Well, you can, but the best case is that they'd pass on the coding and licencing costs to you.

You might find it easier to run a different mail server, one that supports standard protocols and have your Exchange admins set up forwarding to that instead.

[mtmiller]

Has Atlassian been able to scrounge some change to license the MAPI protocol code?

The news alludes to their huge success; I bet enough to cover something like this for the benefit of their State sector.

We are also not able to have POP or IMAP enabled on the Exchange server.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

No, apparently it remains vastly too expensive.  They're also moving in the direction of encouraging chat and push notification over email.

[Mendus Chelapurath]

we are facing the same problem. Not support for IMAP or POP by our exchange server

So can't use jira incoming email feature.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Exchange does support them, but your mail administrators have to actively enable the functions.  I'd question why they don't.

[Michael Culley]

Nic,, they quoted us $50k as it requires a security audit.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

Time to invest in a better mail server, I'd say.

[Michael Culley]

Sure, I'll just suggest they change the mail server for 100,000+ employees. Shouldn't be an issue. :-)

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

That was a bit of a flippant answer on my part, I hope you didn't find it too annoying!

I think it's worth expanding on though.  The initial thought was born of my brain going "if it costs you $50k to enable a standard, well understood, globally used function that takes 2 minutes to enable, then your mail server is probably wasting vast amounts of time and money in many other ways, and moving to another one would save you a fortune".  Exchange really does fit that pattern - I've only seen one mail server with a worse ROI, and worked in several enterprises moving off Exchange to save themselves a fortune.

Then there was a second thought, which was what I've seen (and done myself) in places crippled with poor corporate email services.  We set up a new service on the Jira box itself, with a simple open-source mail server that provides IMAPS mailboxes for only the Jira incoming mail, firewall it so that only your Exchange servers can talk to it, and get them to forward incoming mail to the mail on that local machine.  Tell Jira to use localhost as the email server, and it'll work fine, although you may want to do a little work on stripping any "forwarded" headers the exchange servers stick on it.

[Jimmy chhanechhara]

We are having same issue. POP / IMAP (or Secure IMAP) is not possible to enable in Govt environment. It's complete show stopper for use and what Nic Brough [Adaptavist] COMMUNITY CHAMPION May 31, 2018 stated about 2nd option would be impossible route for us. 

Can we know whether Atlassian has included additional mailbox setting by now or any plan of adding them in future release?

[Deleted user]

Look here for Atlassian's feature suggestions https://jira.atlassian.com/secure/Dashboard.jspa

I'm not expecting them to add it in the future. :'(