E-mail to ticket#
Hinata can watch a mailbox and turn every incoming message into an issue. Point a support or intake address at an IMAP mailbox, and each unread mail becomes a new issue in the project you choose — subject as the title, body as the description, sender recorded as the reporter. It is the inbound half of Hinata's mail story; the outbound half (verification, password reset, notifications) is covered on the E-mail & SMTP page.
Runtime-configured, no restart
E-mail ingestion is configured from the app's Admin area, and the settings live in MongoDB. Turning it on, changing the mailbox or switching the target project all apply without restarting the server — the poller reads the current settings on every cycle.
How it works#
The server runs a scheduled poller. On each cycle it reads the current ingest settings and, when ingestion is enabled and a host and default project are configured, connects to the mailbox over IMAP (or IMAPS), scans the chosen folder for unseen messages, creates an issue from each one, and marks the message as seen so it is never imported twice.
scheduled poll (respects your poll interval)
│
▼
enabled? host + default project set? ── no ──▶ do nothing
│ yes
▼
connect IMAP/IMAPS → open folder (READ_WRITE)
│
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search UNSEEN messages
│
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for each: create issue in the default project, then flag it SEEN
If a poll fails (mailbox unreachable, bad credentials), the error is logged and the next cycle simply tries again — a transient outage never loses mail, because unread messages are picked up on the following successful poll.
What gets created#
Each imported message becomes one issue in the default project you selected:
| Issue field | Comes from |
|---|---|
| Title | The e-mail subject (or (no subject) if empty), truncated to a safe length |
| Description | A short header noting who it was created from, then the message's plain-text body (the HTML part is stripped to text if no plain part exists) |
| Type | Task |
| Reporter | The sender's e-mail address is recorded on the issue |
Because it is a normal issue, everything else in Hinata applies immediately: it lands in the project's default workflow state, appears on the board and backlog, can be assigned, labelled, linked and commented on, and — if the project is connected to Git — can pick up development info once someone references its key.
Pick a dedicated intake project
Point ingestion at a project that exists to receive raw inbound mail (for example a Support Inbox). A person triages each new issue — assigning it, setting type and priority, or moving it into the right project — rather than having unfiltered mail land in an active delivery board.
Configuring it#
Open the Admin area → E-mail ingest and provide the mailbox details. The available settings and their defaults:
| Setting | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| Enabled | false |
Master switch for the poller |
| Host | — | IMAP server hostname |
| Port | 993 |
IMAP port |
| SSL | true |
Use IMAPS (implicit TLS); the standard port for it is 993 |
| Username | — | Mailbox login |
| Password | — | Mailbox password (write-only — never echoed back by the API) |
| Folder | INBOX |
Which folder to scan |
| Default project | — | The project that receives the created issues |
| Poll interval | 60 s |
Minimum seconds between mailbox scans |
Ingestion stays idle until Enabled is on and both a host and a default project are set — so a half-finished configuration never does anything unexpected.
Use a dedicated mailbox
Every unseen message in the chosen folder is imported and then marked seen. Point ingestion at a mailbox that exists only for this purpose, not a shared human inbox — otherwise ordinary unread mail would be turned into issues and flagged as read.
How it complements outbound SMTP#
The two directions are independent and configured separately:
- Inbound (this page) — IMAP polling, configured in the admin area (MongoDB), turns received mail into issues.
- Outbound — E-mail & SMTP — the SMTP relay Hinata uses to send verification, password-reset and notification mail.
You can run either without the other. A read-only status page might only send outbound mail; an intake address might only ingest. Most production deployments run both: SMTP so users get their mail, and ingestion so support requests become tracked issues.
Related pages#
- E-mail & SMTP — outbound mail configuration.
- Admin area — where ingestion is configured at runtime.
- Projects & teams — choosing and triaging the intake project.
- Notifications — how people are told about new issues.