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📧 Planka Email Integration

This project integrates email processing with Planka, a Kanban board management tool. The application retrieves emails, extracts relevant information to create cards on Planka, and manages the acceptance or rejection of these cards based on specific criteria.

Table of Contents

Features

  • Fetches emails from an IMAP server.
  • Extracts board and list IDs from email headers.
  • Creates cards in Planka based on the extracted email information.
  • Handles the results by moving accepted/rejected emails to appropriate mailboxes.

Installation

  1. Clone the Repository

    git clone https://github.com/GEWIS/plankAPI.git
cd plankAPI

  2. Set Up Yarn

    Make sure you have Yarn installed. You can follow the installation guide on the Yarn website.

  3. Install Dependencies

    Run the following command to install the required dependencies:

    yarn install

  4. Copy the .env-example File

    cp .env-example .env

    Make sure to replace the default values with actual credentials before running the application.

Usage

To run the application, ensure you have the required environment variables set up (see below). Then, execute the script:

yarn start:env

The application is also available as a Docker image. To build the image, run the following command:

docker build -t plankapi .

The image will execute yarn start using a cron schedule, which will run the application every hour.

To email the application, make sure to first read the Email Setup section below. If you have set up the email account correctly, it should work out of the box.

For the application to accept an email, it must have a X-Planka-Board-ID and optionally a X-Planka-List-ID header. The X-Planka-Board-ID header should contain the ID of the board to create the card on, while the X-Planka-List-ID header (if present) should contain the ID of the list to create the card in. If the X-Planka-List-ID header is not present, the application will create the card in a list with the name Mail. If this also does not exist, it will add it to the first list in the board.

Adding custom headers to an email is not something that most email clients support. Thunderbird has an add-on called Header Tools Lite which we recommend.

Note

The Planka account used by the application must have write access to the planka board to create cards.

Email Setup

To use this application, you will need to set up an email account with a provider that supports IMAP (such as Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo). By default, the application look for emails in the API mailbox. You can change this by modifying the IMAP_ROOT environment variable.

Make sure that the following folders exist in the IMAP_ROOT mailbox:

  • IN
  • OUT
  • REJECTED

These folders will be used to store the incoming, processed, and rejected emails, respectively. The application will not create these folders if they do not exist, so make sure to create them before running the application.

Important

E-mails send to the inbox will not be processed. This is by design, as a planka board id is not secret and would allow anyone to create a card on the board. Therefore, you should add a filter to your email account which will file emails to the IN folder if they are from a trusted sender.

Environment Variables

This application requires several environment variables to function correctly. Below is a table that describes each variable, its purpose, and its default value.

Variable Description Default Value
IMAP_HOST The hostname of the IMAP server for email retrieval. localhost
IMAP_PORT The port number for the IMAP server. 993
IMAP_TLS Indicates whether to use TLS for the IMAP connection. undefined
IMAP_ROOT Root mailbox folder to use for email retrieval. API
IMAP_USERNAME The username for authenticating with the IMAP server. user
IMAP_PASSWORD The password for the IMAP account. undefined
PLANKA_API_KEY The API key for authenticating with the Planka service. undefined
PLANKA_URL The base URL of the Planka API. http://localhost:3000
LOG_LEVEL The log level for the application. info

PLANKA_API_KEY:

Currently, Planka does not official support API keys. This means that you will have to insert a long-lived session token in the database manually.

Code Overview

This application follows a structured workflow to integrate email processing with Planka. The main process involves initializing a Planka client, retrieving emails from an IMAP server, and processing them to create cards in Planka. Emails are categorized and handled based on the results of the processing:

  1. Email Retrieval: The Mailer class connects to the IMAP server to fetch emails, extract information, and identify board and list IDs from email headers.
  2. Card Creation: The Planka class uses the extracted data to create cards on the specified Planka board and list.
  3. Result Handling: The Mailer class moves processed emails into designated mailboxes (OUT for accepted and REJECTED for rejected emails).

This workflow runs on a scheduled basis using a Dockerized setup, executing the primary script (index.ts) at regular intervals.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License. See the LICENSE file for details.