Connect your support mailbox to Tikivio in about 10 minutes

Before you start

You need:

• an administrator account for your organisation in Tikivio;
• the IMAP and SMTP settings from your email provider: server, port, TLS or STARTTLS mode;
• the mailbox username and its password. If your provider offers it, create an app password reserved for Tikivio instead. First check that your provider accepts IMAP and SMTP sign-in with a password or an app password (see “Limit of this version”).

The number of fetched mailboxes depends on the plan: Basic 1, Essential 2, Pro 5, Team+ 10, Premium 20. During the trial, the Pro plan’s number applies. When the trial ends without a subscription, the organisation moves to the Free plan, limited to a single fetched mailbox: the others stop being fetched, most recent first, and nothing is deleted.

The “about 10 minutes” in the title is an estimate, valid if you already have these settings at hand.

1. Open the form

In Tikivio, open Settings › Email, then New mailbox.

2. Identify the mailbox

In the Identification block, enter a name (for example “Support”) and the support address, for example support@your-domain.com.

3. Set up IMAP fetching

In the IMAP fetching (incoming email) panel:

1. tick “Enable IMAP fetching for this mailbox”;
2. enter your provider’s IMAP server;
3. keep port 993 and, under Encryption, “Implicit TLS (IMAPS 993 / SMTPS 465)”, unless your provider says otherwise;
4. leave the authentication mode on “Password (or app password)”;
5. enter the username and the password (or the app password);
6. keep the INBOX folder, unless your requests arrive in another folder;
7. if the folder already holds messages, tick “Ignore the messages already in the fetched folder”: only messages received after you save will become requests. This box is unticked by default: without it, every message already there becomes a request, with an acknowledgement. It is only offered while the mailbox has never been fetched;
8. leave the “Trusted receiving server (authserv-id), optional” field empty if you do not know this name.

4. Test the IMAP connection

Click “Test IMAP connection”. The result appears above the form: “Connection successful”, or “Connection failed” with a diagnosis showing the failing step: DNS resolution, TCP connection, TLS encryption, Authentication or Folder.

The password typed for a test is not kept: type it again before saving.

5. Set up SMTP sending

Without a mailbox whose SMTP sending is enabled, no acknowledgement or reply is emailed to your requesters. Once sending is enabled, these emails do not go out on their own: retry them from the Outbound queue page (“Retry”).

In the SMTP sending (replies to requesters) panel:

1. tick “Enable SMTP sending through this mailbox”;
2. enter the SMTP server;
3. keep port 587 and, under Encryption, “STARTTLS (143 / 587)”, unless your provider says otherwise;
4. enter the username and the password;
5. fill in the sender address and name and, if needed, a Reply-To address;
6. in the “Tokenised Reply-To addresses (“+” sub-addressing)” list, keep “Automatic: enabled as soon as the “+” sub-addressing self-test succeeds (recommended)”. Choose “Always enabled (your provider accepts “+”)” only if you know your provider delivers addresses such as support+suffix@your-domain.com to the fetched mailbox, or “Disabled” not to use them;
7. keep “Default sender of the organisation (requests without an originating mailbox)” ticked for your first mailbox.

6. Test, then save

Click “Test SMTP connection”, type the passwords again if needed, then click “Save”.

In automatic mode, the token is only enabled after a successful self-test: once the mailbox is saved, click “Edit” next to it, then “Run the “+” self-test”. The self-test needs both fetching and sending enabled, with their passwords saved; if it succeeds, replies are attached more reliably.

7. Check that everything works

• Send a test email to your support address from another mailbox.
• At the next fetch (every 5 minutes), a request appears in the email channel under Requests, and an acknowledgement goes out through your SMTP server. Like replies, it ends with a short Tikivio notice and the site address: the “Powered by Tikivio” line during the trial and on paid plans, a short presentation of Tikivio on the Free plan.
• The Inbound mail log shows each fetched message and how it was handled; the Outbound queue page tracks outgoing emails.
• In the getting-started assistant, the “Connect a mailbox or create the first request” step is ticked as soon as the mailbox is saved: on its own, it does not prove that fetching works.

If something fails

• Tikivio refuses servers on a private or local address.
• Only the usual ports are accepted: 143 and 993 for IMAP; 25, 465, 587 and 2525 for SMTP.
• The “Accept a self-signed certificate” (fetching) and “Accept a self-signed certificate (SMTP)” (sending) options disable the server identity check: keep them for a trusted internal server.

Passwords

Passwords are encrypted in the database and never sent back to the browser: an empty field keeps the stored password, which is only ever used with the stored host, port, encryption and username (you must retype it when changing any of them, including for a test).

Limit of this version

OAuth authentication is planned but not available in this version: use an app password. A mailbox whose provider refuses passwords and requires OAuth therefore cannot be connected yet; this is the case for Microsoft 365 mailboxes set up that way.