Unified inbox approach

[timconsidine]

I'd like to achieve a unified inbox in SnappyMail.
If I understand correctly, it doesn't do this 'out of the box'.
I get that you can add multiple accounts, but this requires you to click through each account to check its inbox. So multi-account but not unified inbox.

So I guess this will work :

• create an alias for each desired address@domain.tld on a real mailbox eg web@primary.tld
• add an identity for each address@domain.tld on the real mailbox settings (to allow 'send as' functionality)
• have a 'dummy' address on each domain.tld (eg postmaster) so the domain is send-enabled in Cloudron

Questions :

• does the send/reply from address@domain.tld actually go through web@primary.tld smtp with those headers (i.e. the source mailbox is discoverable through header inspection and it is not a fully effective unified inbox)
  EDIT : my simple test seems to show the headers are clean, so really just confirming this is true more widely
• if so, I guess not really necessary to have a dummy address on the other domains to enable sending ?
• is enabling masquerading a better or worse or equivalent approach for send/reply?
• have I missed the point entirely and one of SnappyMail / Rainloop / Roundcube do actually support unified inbox ?

[robi]

Fun timing on this.. I just had to set up a way to send email to prevent header source IP leakage.

Sadly, even through a VPN, each desktop client attaches the local public IP to the headers when sending an email.

Hence, setting up webmail where that becomes impossible was needed.

Alias setup works.
Another new mailbox on diff domain also works, but requires masquerading to be setup for sending as that new mailbox or it errors out.
All aliases and mailboxes owned by a single Cloudron user.
No need to have other dummy addresses.

So all in all not a unified inbox, but 1 Cloudron user can send as many mail + domain users via a Snappy web interface

[timconsidine]

@robi said in Unified inbox approach:

So all in all not a unified inbox, but 1 Cloudron user can send as many mail + domain users via a Snappy web interface

wow, fast feedback,thank you so much !

[girish]

@timconsidine said in Unified inbox approach:

have a 'dummy' address on each domain.tld (eg postmaster) so the domain is send-enabled in Cloudron

There's no need to create a dummy address (or in fact any address at all) to send enable a domain.

does the send/reply from address@domain.tld actually go through web@primary.tld smtp with those headers (i.e. the source mailbox is discoverable through header inspection and it is not a fully effective unified inbox)

I suspect the source domain might become discoverable. For example, if someone sends you an email and then you reply and they reply back. Then, both mail servers end up adding all sorts of headers for SPF check etc. Also, host -t MX <secondary.tld> will give the primary domain away anyway.

is enabling masquerading a better or worse or equivalent approach for send/reply?

Because masquerading is domain level, this will also enable other users to send as anyone. So, this is a security issue or not depending on your users.

Next release, aliases can also have "wildcard". Generally, I prefer having specific aliases/wildcard boxes to "track" the addresses I am using. This also help replicate the setup outside Cloudron. Most hosted mail providers (afaik) don't have these features like masquerading, so that's worth a think :-D.

have I missed the point entirely and one of SnappyMail / Rainloop / Roundcube do actually support unified inbox ?

They don't support it afaik. Out of curiosity, are there hosted mail providers that have a unified inbox ? Even for Google domains, I have only seen people switch profiles.

BTW, if you use Firefox, just use a container for each domain.

[timconsidine]

@girish thank you !

I am not sure about hosted email providers supporting unified inbox.
It seems to be a feature of desktop clients rather than webmail.
So I suspect not.

I'm moving away from desktop clients as I use multiple desktops and don't want the hassle of setting up or maintaining configs on multiple devices.

I'll give my setup a try and see how it goes, without the dummy mailbox (saves a step and avoids setting up a sieve filter to discard incoming).

[jdaviescoates]

@timconsidine said in Unified inbox approach:

@girish thank you !
I am not sure about hosted email providers supporting unified inbox.
It seems to be a feature of desktop clients rather than webmail.
So I suspect not.

Nextcloud Mail has this
https://apps.nextcloud.com/apps/mail

It's actually got quite a few nice features that many open source webmail apps lack, but it's a bit slow and buggy and I can't stand it's current silly tiny pop-up compose window that wastes nearly all of my available screen space:

I just don't get how anyone could think that was a good idea/ UI

(Edit: someone else has already created an issue about this https://github.com/nextcloud/mail/issues/6589 )

[timconsidine]

@jdaviescoates good suggestion, and will certainly bear it in mind.
I'm kinda moving away from Nextcloud as it feels bit bloaty for my liking.
I was principally using it for file shares and sync-ing, but found Seafile to be more to my liking.
Maybe if I used more of Nextcloud features, I would like it more !

Yep, I hate those tiny popups also !

[jdaviescoates]

@timconsidine said in Unified inbox approach:

Maybe if I used more of Nextcloud features, I would like it more !

Yeah, inspired by @marcusquinn I've recently started using Nextcloud Talk instead of Rocket.Chat.

Similarly, I've started using Nextcloud Deck instead of WeKan too (partly because the Nextcloud Desk app is much nicer than using WeKan on mobile)

[robi]

@jdaviescoates said in Unified inbox approach:

Similarly, I've started using Nextcloud Deck instead of WeKan too (partly because the Nextcloud Desk app is much nicer than using WeKan on mobile)

Too bad it has no gantt charting.