What's with the Confluence POP3 setup, and the system email addons?

Question

With Confluence server, 6.0, it seems you *might* be able to do incoming email handling for things like comments, and page creation.

There's a POP3 mail handler under General Settings / Mail, and there's a few interesting Email system addons, some are disabled.

I'm not able to find any real information on these settings. The online docs only refer to SMTP for outgoing email, and the addons have no mention at all.

I suspect this is either old, deprecated/broken functionality, or something that was never turned on.

I don't have email enabled at all on my test instance so it's not easy for me to test.

I'm curious if anyone's done anything with them and has any insight to share?

Nathanael Motz · Answer

I opened a case with Atlassian support about this. I thought I would report back in case it helps somebody else. Basically the "Page from email" template/plugin is not supported. Also mentioned here: https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Confluence-questions/Confluence-Email-to-Page-system-plugin/qaq-p/160398.

Nathanael Motz · Answer

It's interesting. The POP server settings seem a bit different than the SMTP settings. I noticed today that one is taken to the POP settings when trying to use the "Page from email" template. The message that pops up when trying to use that template suggests that the POP server settings are for getting emails into Confluence. I've been trying to track down information on this functionality but haven't found much (besides this question).

AnnWorley · Answer

The POP server under Confluence Administration>Mail Servers is for outgoing notifications.

Confluence 6.0 does have built-in email archiving at the space level but no ability out of the box to create pages or comment via email.

There is a feature request open that seems to match your use case:

Create space or page from emails to Confluence

The feature request has a link to this plugin as a possible workaround, it is compatible with Confluence 6.0:

Send EMail To Page Plugin