Reply to task emails

Kanroo can turn a reply to a task notification email into a comment on that task. You answer the email, and your text appears as your comment in Kanroo. Nothing else about the task changes.

This page explains when replying works, what happens to attachments, and what the error emails mean. Replying is optional: you can always open the task and comment in the application instead.

How it works

1. You receive a task notification email - a mention, an assignment, a new comment.
2. If you may comment on that task, the email carries a personal reply address in its Reply-To header. Your mail client uses it when you press Reply.
3. You write your answer and send it.
4. Kanroo posts the plain text of your answer as a comment from your account. Characters such as * or # stay as you typed them; an email reply never formats text.

A successful reply gets no confirmation email. Open the task to see your comment. Comments posted by email show an envelope icon. Editing the comment in Kanroo does not remove that marker. Other participants may receive the usual task notification about your comment. A comment posted by email is never shown on a public board, because an email can contain a signature.

What gets posted

Only the plain text of your answer is posted.

• Attachments are ignored. Files and inline images are discarded, including logos in your signature. The text is still posted. To add a file, open the task in Kanroo.
• Formatting is reduced to text. If your mail client sends HTML only, Kanroo converts it to plain text.
• Quoted history is removed. Quoted lines, a signature after the -- separator, and the usual “On … wrote:” or “Original Message” blocks are cut. When it is unclear whether a passage is quoted history, Kanroo keeps it rather than deleting something you meant to say.
• Empty and overlong answers fail. A comment must contain text and stay within the normal comment limit of 2,048 characters. Line breaks and characters such as *, #, or < count a little extra, because Kanroo keeps them as plain text. Nothing is silently shortened.

Who may reply

You may reply only while you may comment on that task in Kanroo: a current member of the organization with editor rights or higher on that board. Receiving a notification, following a task, or being an organization administrator is not enough on its own.

Your reply must come from the verified email address of your Kanroo account. A plus tag, an alias, or a second address of yours is a different address and is rejected. Forwarding a notification to a colleague does not let them reply either - even if they have their own rights on that board.

Your sending domain must also authenticate its mail with SPF or DKIM, aligned with the domain in your From address. Practically every business and consumer mail provider does this. If yours does not, your replies cannot be accepted and you comment in the application instead.

Following, assignments, and notification settings

Follow in the task header controls which task updates you receive; while you follow a task, the button reads Following, and choosing it again unfollows the task. Following does not grant or remove permission to comment, and unfollowing does not revoke reply addresses you already received.

With task notification emails enabled and access to the board, these rules apply to new comments by other people that do not mention you:

Your relation to the task	Do you receive comment emails?
Assignee and follower	Yes, once per update.
Assignee, after unfollowing	Yes, because you are still assigned.
Follower, without an assignment	Yes.
Neither assignee nor follower	No.

Unfollowing is therefore not a mute switch for an assigned task. You may also receive an email when someone mentions you, assigns you, or removes your assignment. Removing your assignment does not end a separate follow. Choosing Follow again resumes updates while you have access and task email is enabled.

You can still reply to an older notification after you unfollow or are removed as an assignee, provided its reply address is valid and you still have permission to comment. Posting that email reply does not automatically make you a follower again.

For example, if you unfollow a task but remain its assignee, you still receive comment emails and can reply. If you are then removed as an assignee, ordinary comment emails stop, but replies to valid older notifications still work with your board write rights. If your board role changes to Viewer, you can still read the task, but email replies can no longer add comments.

To stop optional task emails across all tasks, turn Task and Page notification emails off in Personal settings → Notifications. The Unsubscribe from task email link in a notification has the same account-wide effect; it does not unfollow just that task. Existing valid reply addresses still work with the required rights. Failure notices and summaries remain enabled because they report what happened to a reply you sent.

Reply addresses expire after 30 days

Each notification carries its own reply address, bound to you and to that task. It works for 30 days from the moment Kanroo first sent that email. Retrying delivery does not extend it.

After that, replies to the old email are refused. Eligible failures are reported individually or in a summary as explained below. Newer notifications for the same task carry a fresh reply address.

If your organization requires SSO

An organization can require single sign-on (SSO). Replying by email is then as strong as a browser session: Kanroo accepts your reply only if you signed in through SSO recently - within the same 24-hour window that unlocks the organization in the browser.

If your last SSO sign-in is older, the reply is not posted and the notice asks you to sign in through SSO and comment in the application. Signing in again does not repost the old reply; send a new one or comment in Kanroo. See Personal sign-in and SSO sign-in for how the sign-in methods relate.

When something goes wrong

When processing an incoming reply, Kanroo retries technical problems for up to four hours after your message arrived. After that, or for any problem that retrying cannot fix, the attempt ends and no comment is created.

An eligible failure produces a short notice, Your email reply was not posted, or joins a summary if several replies have failed recently. An individual notice names the time Kanroo received your reply, so you know which one it means. It never quotes your message, its subject, or the task. Once the reply has failed, Kanroo does not retry adding its comment: send a new eligible reply or comment in Kanroo. Restoring your permissions does not post the rejected reply.

Notice	What it means	What to do
Your reply was received but could not be processed within the required time window.	A technical problem lasted longer than four hours.	Comment in the application.
You no longer have the access required to comment on this task.	You do not have permission to comment. You may still be able to read the task.	Ask an administrator, or open the task in Kanroo.
Your organization requires an active single sign-on session to comment by email.	Your last SSO sign-in is too old.	Sign in through SSO and comment in the application.
You have reached the limit of … email replies per 10 minutes for your account.	Your own short-term limit is full. The notice names the earliest time a new reply can be accepted.	Wait until that time, or comment in the application. Capacity is not reserved for you.
Your organization has reached its limit of … email replies per 10 minutes.	The organization-wide limit is full; both sentences appear when both limits are full.	Wait until the named time, or comment in the application.
Your reply did not contain text that could be posted.	After quoted history, signatures, and attachments were removed, nothing was left.	Reply again with your answer in the text of the email.
Your reply text is longer than the comment limit of 2,048 characters.	Nothing was shortened.	Reply again with a shorter text.
Your message is larger than the size limit of … for one email.	The whole message, including attachments, exceeds the operator’s limit.	Reply again with text only.
Your message could not be read, and the cause is unknown.	The mail could not be parsed.	Reply again with a plain-text answer.
The reply address you used is no longer valid.	The address expired, was revoked, or the task is gone.	Reply to a newer notification, or comment in Kanroo.

Some messages get no answer at all: mail from an address that is not your account, automatic out-of-office replies, and mail to an unknown or unreadable reply address. Kanroo identifies the recipient of a failure notice from the reply address, and it can do that for up to 90 days after the address was issued. Later than that, a reply to a very old notification simply gets no personal notice.

When several replies fail in a short time

Kanroo sends at most three individual notices per ten minutes, counted across all your tasks and organizations. Further failures are collected, and you receive one summary email instead: Several email replies were not posted, or One email reply was not posted when it counts a single reply. The first summary is scheduled ten minutes after the collection starts. Further summaries are scheduled at most once every thirty minutes while replies keep failing. Processing and mail delivery can add a delay. You do not need to send another reply to receive a pending summary.

A summary names how many replies failed for each reason and the time span in which Kanroo received them. It lists no tasks, no message text, and no limits. None of the counted replies was posted as a comment. Kanroo does not retry posting them: send an eligible reply again, or comment in Kanroo. An authorization line such as “2 replies were sent without the access required to comment” means that comment permission was missing; it does not necessarily mean you lost read access. Individual notices resume after thirty minutes without a new failed reply, once nothing is left to report.

For example, three empty replies can each produce a notice. A fourth joins a summary. If you then send two replies without comment permission while summary mode is still active, those failures are also collected instead of producing immediate notices. Changing tasks, organizations, or failure reasons does not start a new individual-notice budget.

Each eligible failure is counted once, in an individual notice or one summary. A repeated delivery that Kanroo identifies as the same reply does not add another count. Sending a new reply is a new attempt and can produce another failure. Not every rejected message can receive feedback; see the exceptions above.

If no feedback email arrives

No error email does not prove that a comment was posted. Open the task and check before sending the same answer again. Feedback may be waiting for a summary, delayed in delivery, or in your spam folder. A sending provider may also reject a message before Kanroo receives it, for example because it exceeds the mail server’s size limit; in that case, check for its non-delivery report.

If Kanroo temporarily cannot send a failure notice or summary, it retries delivery within a window of up to 24 hours after that feedback email was prepared. This retries the feedback email, not the failed comment. It is separate from the four-hour processing window for an incoming reply. A longer outage or another delivery failure can leave you without a notice. Delivery retries also cannot guarantee that your mail provider receives a message only once.

If the comment is still absent and no feedback explains why, ask your administrator to check processing and mail delivery. Provide your sending address and the time you sent the reply; do not share the personal reply address publicly.

Replying to the visible sender address

The visible From address of a Kanroo notification is a sending address, not a mailbox. Some mail clients answer it instead of Reply-To - for example when you use “Reply to all” or edit the recipient by hand. Kanroo’s mail server refuses every recipient except the reply address, so your own provider sends you a non-delivery report. Nothing was posted; press Reply on an unedited notification, or comment in Kanroo.

Turning replies off

For an organization. An owner or administrator opens Organization settings → Collaboration → Reply by email and turns Allow replies by email off. This permanently invalidates every reply address the organization has issued. Turning the setting on again does not bring them back; new notifications carry new addresses.

For yourself. Open Personal settings → Notifications → Reply by email and choose Revoke all reply addresses. Every address issued to you stops working, in every organization you belong to. A reply you already sent but that has not been posted yet is refused.

Revoking is not an opt-out: new task notifications can still include a new reply address. To stop receiving task emails, turn Task and Page notification emails off in Personal settings → Notifications.

Availability

Replying to task emails is part of Kanroo’s Enterprise features and is available on all hosted plans. A self-hosted deployment has it only when the operator runs the mail server for it. Where it is disabled in an Enterprise deployment, the settings above remain visible with their actions disabled and notifications carry no reply address. Core does not show the personal reply-by-email settings.