I'm trying to set up an automated email system for my bot that queries data on a private cloud infrastructure. The idea is simple: I send an email to the bot's address, which triggers the creation of a data report. The report is then sent back to my original email as a reply. However, I'm running into a lot of issues. I've tried different mail services like Gmail and Proton Mail Bridge, but sometimes my cloud provider (AWS) blocks the automation or the configuration just doesn't support email services. I've successfully implemented this bot on Telegram, so I'm looking for reliable solutions to achieve the same via email. Has anyone else faced similar challenges, and can you suggest any good solutions for setting up this automated mail service?
3 Answers
I find it a bit unusual to rely on incoming emails for triggering alerts. Typically, you'd use a monitoring service that emails you directly when something happens on the server. If you must use email triggering, maybe set up a script that keeps an out-of-office message updated on Outlook using the Graph API—run it every few minutes to prep for incoming messages.
Triggering reports via incoming emails might not be the best approach. It's usually more secure to use something you can authenticate, like a function. A tokenized webhook could work better. You could have your bot pull the data, format it in HTML, and then send it to a specific email instead of receiving the trigger through another email.
It sounds like you're trying to set up a mail relay, which can definitely be tricky. Have you checked the error messages from your service providers? Sometimes they can give you clues about what's going wrong. Also, I'd recommend looking into more stable email services specifically designed for automation. You may run into issues with mainstream services unless you purchase higher-tier plans.
I’ve set everything up too, but whenever I try to run Proton Mail Bridge on my Linux instance, I hit a wall with errors. I can fix some, but new ones keep popping up. It seems like many services are unstable without a paid plan.
That does sound interesting! But I still need the initial email trigger for my workflow. Do you think there's a way to implement the email interaction with your suggested method?