Support Ticket Opened looks like Spam

[larry_rma82]

I have a problem with the autosend of the email to the user after the user creates a new ticket. I initially posted a "me too" message to this thread:

http://www.osticket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=269

I've since done some experimenting and noticed that some email accounts I have do receive a "Support Ticket Opened" email, and others do not.

One clue is that my Hotmail account put the message in the Junk folder. Even after I moved it to my Inbox, it still flagged it was a suspicious message. Someone else noticed similar anti-spam behavior:

http://www.osticket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105

I think a major part of the problem is the Subject: line -

Support Ticket Opened [#598273]

- probably looks too much like a typical spam Subject: line.

Has anyone changed the way this Subject: line is created, so that it is much less spam-like? Maybe add the user's full name? Any changes to the format of the message itself?

A more disturbing idea - I notice in the email headers that "osTicket v 1.6" is listed as the mailer. Are major email providers flagging email generated by osTicket as spam?

Meanwhile - I have added the ticket number to the "Support ticket request created" page, by adding something like this to the thankyou.inc.php file:

Your ticket number is: <?=$ticket->extid?>

On the ticket creation page, I may put an advisory message to ask the user to make the default email address "trusted".

[peter]

It is a bad idea to show the ticket ID, it must be emailed. See http://osticket.com/forums/showthread.php?t=195

[larry_rma82]

I have a question that belongs on that thread instead of this one, so I've added a new comment to that thread.

[larry_rma82]

I have a question that belongs on that thread instead of this one, so I've added a new comment to that thread.

So I finally understand the security issue with putting the ticket number on the "Thank You" page, and will remove it from mine.

I still need to figure out why email to staff who are assigned a ticket is getting to the staff's email account, but the email to the user with the new ticket number is being blocked by the same email provider.

[peter]

I still need to figure out why email to staff who are assigned a ticket is getting to the staff's email account, but the email to the user with the new ticket number is being blocked by the same email provider.

Possibly because the auto response has a url on the body of the email? You can try changing the email template (body/subject) and see what happens.

[larry_rma82]

I have written a small PHP script with the sendmail() function copied from the file class.misc.php . I have run it on my desktop computer, and replicated the email problems I have with certain email providers.

When I run the same script on the actual production server that the ticketing system with really be run on, I can successfully send email to all the email accounts I tested before, even the failed ones.

An aside - I work at a large institution, so my desktop computer is sitting behind a firewall.

When I compared the headers of the emails sent from my computer versus the web server, the main difference is the value of "Return-Path". Neither show the value created by the sendmail() function. Email sent from my computer has "computer_network_id@local_network_name" as the "Return-Path", and the email sent from the web server has a "Return-Path" value that is "apache@server_domain" .

Anyway, I proved that the sendmail() function will successfully send email when it runs on our production server, so I am considering that my problem is solved. For development on my desktop computer, I will only use email accounts that do not block my autogenerated emails.