Create tasks from email

An Email Intake creates one task for every new email. You choose a board and the list where the tasks go. Kanroo gives the intake its own email address. Every email that is sent or forwarded to this address becomes a task. You need no mailbox of your own.

This page explains how to set an intake up, what Kanroo accepts, what a task looks like, how Kanroo avoids duplicates, and what the states and notifications mean. Email Intakes are available on every Kanroo Cloud plan, see Plans and limits. A self-hosted deployment has them only with the Enterprise Edition.

Set up an intake

You need the manager role on the board. Only current board managers can create, change, activate, pause, and delete Email Intakes. Organization roles alone are not enough.

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1. Open the board, then Intakes from the board actions (Shift+A). Open the Email tab and choose New email intake (box 1).
2. Enter a name and choose the target list, a default priority, and optional fixed labels that every created task receives. Choose Create intake.
3. Kanroo shows the address. Copy it with the copy button and choose Done.

The intake is Active at once. Its card (box 2) shows when the last accepted email arrived and has a copy button for the address (box 3). A duplicate, a skipped automatic reply, or an email above a receiving limit does not change this time. Edit in the card’s More actions menu also shows the address. Only board managers see the address.

Send or forward mail to the address

Send an email to the address, or set up forwarding in your mail system: either a forwarding rule in your mailbox or a forwarding address of your domain. How to set up forwarding depends on your mail provider; follow its help pages. Kanroo finds the intake by the address the email was delivered to. The To and Cc lines do not matter, so the address also works as Bcc and next to other recipients.

Every email that reaches the address becomes a task. Kanroo does not filter by sender or subject. If you forward a whole mailbox, use one that exists only for requests, such as support@, and keep newsletters and internal mail out of it.

Many providers send a confirmation email with a link or code to a new forwarding target. This email arrives as a task in the target list. Open the task, follow the instructions in it, and then delete the task.

An intake receives new emails only. To create tasks from older emails, forward them to the address.

What is accepted

• Size. The mail server accepts emails up to 25 MiB, including attachments. It rejects a larger email, and the sending mail system reports this to the sender.
• Attachments become task attachments, see Attachments. A forwarded email is not unpacked: a forward inside the email text stays in the description, and an email attached as a file is stored as an .eml file.
• Spam. The mail server rejects clear spam. An email that it only marks as spam still becomes a task, because forwarded emails are often marked by mistake.
• Script files. The mail server rejects an email with a script file attached, such as .js or .bat, as spam, even though you can upload such files to a task. The sender receives a delivery failure report, and no task is created.
• Automatic replies and delivery failure reports are skipped. Other automatic emails, such as notifications and confirmation emails, create tasks.

The address is the only key

Kanroo does not check who sent an email to the address. Anyone who knows the address can create tasks, and the sender shown on a task is reported, not verified (see The reported sender). Give the address only to people and systems that should create tasks.

If the address became known to the wrong people, choose Rotate address in the intake’s More actions menu. After you confirm, the intake gets a new address and the former address stops working at once. Emails to the former address are discarded without a task and without a reply. Update every sender and forwarding rule to the new address. An address that does not belong to any intake, for example because of a typing error, also discards the email without a reply.

Receiving limits

Each intake accepts a limited number of emails per hour (60 by default; your deployment may set another value). The count starts again in the next hour.

The emails that wait in Kanroo are also limited in size: at most 128 MiB per intake and 512 MiB per organization. Only emails that Kanroo still holds count, for example while an intake is paused. A processed email no longer counts.

Kanroo discards emails above either limit and creates no task for them. They appear in the intake’s failures as Receiving limit reached and cannot be retried.

Held mail and the 7-day limit

Kanroo keeps receiving emails for an intake that cannot create tasks at the moment, and holds them:

• the intake is Paused;
• the intake is paused because of the plan limit;
• the intake Needs attention because its target list was deleted;
• the board is archived;
• the organization is read-only.

When the reason ends, for example when a manager activates the intake again or chooses a new target list, the held emails become tasks. Kanroo holds an email for at most 7 days. After that it is shown in the failures as Expired while on hold and does not become a task.

Where the email is stored

An email to the address is stored in Kanroo’s own mailbox until it is processed. Kanroo removes it there shortly after the task is created, and at once for an email above a receiving limit. A failed email, including one that expired on hold, stays there for 6 more days so that you can still retry it, and is then removed. A held email can therefore stay up to about 13 days: up to 7 days on hold and 6 days after it expired. Deleting the intake removes its waiting emails at once. While your deployment has Email Intakes switched off, Kanroo removes no stored emails until they are enabled again.

What a task looks like

Every accepted email becomes one task at the end of the target list:

• Title: the subject. An email without a subject gets the title Email without subject. A very long subject is shortened with an ellipsis.
• Description: the plain text of the email, including signature and quoted history. An HTML-only email is converted to text; link texts are kept, link targets and images are not. Formatting characters are shown literally, and nothing in the text mentions or notifies a member. Very long text is cut off and ends with [Email content truncated by Kanroo]. An empty email gets no description.
• Attachments: the files of the email, see Attachments.
• Priority and labels come from the intake settings at the moment the email arrived. Later changes to the settings apply to later emails only.
• Created by shows no person. The task card on the board shows a mail icon, and the task details show the intake name, the reported sender, when the email was received, and when the task was created.

If an email cannot be read, for example because it is malformed or larger than the deployment allows, Kanroo still creates the task with the description The email body could not be processed. so that no request is lost.

Automatic replies (such as out-of-office messages) and delivery failure reports are skipped and create no task (see What is accepted). Kanroo does not send any reply or error email to the sender.

Attachments

Kanroo attaches the files of an email to its task. Emails that Kanroo processed before this feature keep no attachments.

• Allowed files. The same file types and the same size limit per file apply as for files you upload to a task, see Plans and limits. Kanroo does not scan files for malware, does not open archives, and shows no preview.
• Inline images inside the email text, such as logos in a signature, are left out. Some mail programs embed images without marking them as inline. Kanroo stores such an image as a file, so a signature logo can arrive as an attachment.
• Inline text files. Some mail programs, such as Apple Mail, place files inside the email text. A plain-text or HTML file placed this way becomes part of the description, not an attachment. Other files placed this way, except images, are attached as usual.
• Attached emails are stored unopened as an .eml file. An attached email without a name is called forwarded-message.eml.
• Limits per email. Kanroo stores at most 10 files and at most 25 MiB in total per email. A file that no longer fits is skipped; a smaller file after it can still be stored.
• Skipped files are listed in one line at the end of the description, for example [3 attachments skipped by Kanroo: file type not allowed (2), limit of 10 reached (1)]. Keep the original email if you need these files.

The task shows Email Intake as the uploader of these files. If a file cannot be stored because of a temporary problem, Kanroo tries the email again later. On the last try within 24 hours, it creates the task without that file and lists it as storage failed.

Duplicates

Kanroo creates each email exactly once, even if processing is interrupted or the server restarts. Two safeguards apply:

• Kanroo remembers the emails it has received, so the same email never creates a second task, even after a pause.
• Emails carry a message ID from the sending mail system. If the same message ID reaches the same intake again, no second task is created. An email without a message ID is recognized as a duplicate for seven days by its content.

The same email sent to two intakes creates one task in each. Deleting a task does not bring the email back as a new task. A new intake is a fresh start and does not know the emails of a deleted intake.

The reported sender

The sender shown in the task details is the From address as it appears in the email. Kanroo does not verify it; email senders can be forged. Treat it as reported information, not as proof of identity. If the email has no readable sender, the task shows Unknown sender.

The search in the app does not find tasks by their sender.

States

State	Meaning
Active	Emails to the address become tasks.
Paused	A manager paused the intake. Emails are held for up to 7 days. Choose Activate in the card’s More actions menu to resume.
Paused (plan limit)	The organization has more intakes than its plan allows. Emails are held for up to 7 days. Upgrade the plan or delete other intakes to resume.
Paused (board archived)	The board is archived. Emails are held for up to 7 days. Restore the board to resume.
Needs attention	The target list was deleted, and an email arrived for it. The intake shows the reason and since when.

Deleting an intake is final. Its address stops working at once, and existing tasks remain with their origin. They then show the intake as deleted.

Notifications for board managers

When an intake changes to Needs attention, every current board manager receives one email with the organization, the board, the intake name, the reason, the time, and a link to the settings. The email contains neither the address nor content of any message. Further failures during the same problem send no additional email. When the intake creates its next task, the managers receive one recovery email.

Privacy

• The address is shown only to board managers and is never logged.
• Kanroo stores the text that became the task, the reported sender, the receipt time, and the attachments as task files. It does not store the raw email, the full headers, or the recipient list in its database. An email stays in Kanroo’s own mailbox only until it is processed (Where the email is stored).
• The sender and the intake name are visible only to members who can open the task. They are not shown on public boards, in public forms, in the public API, in webhooks, or in the audit log.
• Tasks created from an email never appear on a public board, not even after a member edits them. Only members who can open the board see them.
• Deleting a task removes its sender information. After an intake is deleted, its remaining bookkeeping records are removed after the retention period of your deployment (30 days by default).

Troubleshooting

Needs attention. The list the tasks were created in was deleted. As soon as the list is deleted, the card says “Choose an active list under Edit”. The state changes to Needs attention when Kanroo processes the next email. Choose another list with Edit in the card’s More actions menu. Emails that arrived before that become tasks in the new list. Until the next email creates a task, the intake shows that it is recovering.

An email did not become a task. Choose the failed count on the intake, or Show failures in its More actions menu. The list shows the most recent failed messages with the receipt time, the reported sender, the reason, and the retry state. Temporary problems are retried automatically for 24 hours. A message that is marked Failed can be retried with Retry message within 6 days. A message that was removed from Kanroo’s mailbox before Kanroo could read it is shown as Message gone with the retry state Not in INBOX and cannot be retried.

Also check that the sender or the forwarding rule uses the current address (after Rotate address, the former address discards every email), the Receiving limit reached and Expired while on hold entries in the failures, and whether the mail server rejected the email as clear spam. The sender then gets a delivery failure report.

A task is missing after a pause. Emails that arrived during the pause become tasks when the intake is active again. Kanroo holds them for at most 7 days.