How to make email work better email2issue

How to make email work better email2issue
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The problem:

We are using a bug tracking system, like most software development companies. Creating an issue is quite simple. Open bug tracking system, fill some inputs, upload attachments – done. The issue is created. Sometimes an issue is described with multiple attachments (screenshots). A bug tracking system allows us to embed images into a description. All issues come from users in the form of an email.

Current process:

It’s just slow and time-consuming. We have to read the email and download the attachments. Copy and paste the body into the right field. Upload attachments and embed them again into the correct place. It’s not rocket science but takes a lot of time, especially when you have multiple issues with multiple attachments.

Solution:

  1.  AWS SES to handle incoming emails. Simple, fast, and reliable. Send email – get output as an object on S3 bucket – get notification via SNS with body of the email
  2. Go microservice to explode email to usable parts
{
    "From":"",
    "To":"",
    "Subject":"",
    "Text":"",
    "Inlines":[
      {"ContentID":"image001.png@01D3B226.F43A5000","FileName":"image001.png"},{"ContentID":"image002.jpg@01D3B226.F43A5000","FileName":"image002.jpg"}
      ],
    "Dir":"2018/03/16/095418/"},
    "Html" : "",
    "Markup" : ""
}

As simple as powerful it is, can be reused for any other purpose. Micro service get’s email body as an input, outputs JSON with structure and ready to use links to attachments.

  1. Just a simple post query to Issue Tracker API to create new issue.

  2. Bonus feature: email notification to issue reporter that given issue was created.

 

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