Redmine email automation

Process every email as a Redmine ticket

Forward incoming mail to your dedicated Redmine address and let Redmine create or update tickets automatically.
Attachments, statuses and keywords stay in sync while the workflow stays under your control.

Match these Redmine values

The example below relies on these identifiers so that email actions map into the right places. Adjust the values to fit your own projects, users and workflows.

Project called Test with identifier test
User joe with email joe@saas-secure.com
Trackers: Bug, Feature, Support
Statuses: New, Feedback, In Progress, Closed

Customer Center

Enable email reception

Log in and open your Redmine settings. Activate email reception, choose the default project, tracker and assignee, and decide how to handle unknown senders.

Redmine settings overview in the customer center — Customer center settings.

Activate email reception for Redmine — Email reception settings.

Disable Override Attributes if you want keywords to steer the project, tracker or assignee, otherwise keep it active to protect the defaults. You can choose to reject or accept emails from unknown senders so that Redmine acts as your help desk or only accepts registered users.

Example email reception settings — Reception example.

Create tickets

Send your first email

Compose an email in your favorite client and send it to the address shown in the customer center (usually yourredmine@saas-secure.com). The subject becomes the ticket title, the body the description, and attachments are added to the ticket.

Subject: a first test via email
Body: This is the description of the ticket.
Status: New tickets arrive with the configured default.

Processing takes about 1-5 minutes depending on workload. Add watchers by listing them in the CC field when you send the email; adding observers later via email is not possible.

First email creates a ticket — Email-to-ticket demo.

The ticket with ID #22 has now been created in Redmine. The email subject became the topic of the ticket.

Redmine ticket created from email — Ticket detail view.

Update tickets

Reply with keywords

Send another email with the ticket number in the subject to update its status or add notes. The keywords in the body determine status changes, tracker switches and more.

Subject: Re: [#22]
Body: this is another description with a status change.
Status: In Progress

Redmine status change via email — Status update via email.

Keywords for control

Fine-tune how emails affect the ticket

project: use the project identifier to route the ticket into another project.
status: change the ticket status from the keywords section in the email body.
tracker: switch the tracker as long as the tracker is available in the selected project.
category: set the category when categories exist in the project.
assigned_to: assign the ticket to a user or group by login name.
fixed_version: select a version if versions are configured in the project.
private: mark the new ticket as private.
<Custom field name>: assign values to custom fields the same way you would inside Redmine.

Add watchers while creating the ticket by listing them in the CC field. Once the ticket exists, email replies cannot add watchers anymore — update the ticket directly if you need to change observers.

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