Vision Helpdesk now supports Google Apps (Gmail POP3, SMTP, IMAP with SSL)

What is Google Apps ?

Google Apps

Google Apps is a service from Google for using custom domain names with several Google products. It features several Web applications with similar functionality to traditional office suites, including: Gmail, Google Calendar, Talk, Docs and Sites.

How to Configure your Domain Name with Google Hosted Email Account?

Sign up to the Google Hosted Account, Verify your domain ownership by doing one of these steps :

• Put a HTML file in the root directory of your webserver or
• Edit your CName record in your domain control panel

Simple way is by putting the HTML verification file in your root / public_html directory.

After Google has verified it, the next step is setting up MX records — One needs to setup following MX records –

aspmx.l.google.com. [10]
alt1.aspmx.l.google.com. [20]
alt2.aspmx.l.google.com. [30]
aspmx2.googlemail.com. [40]
aspmx3.googlemail.com. [50]
aspmx4.googlemail.com. [60]
aspmx5.googlemail.com. [70]

Here 10, 20, 30 etc represents MX record priority.

Next is setup SPF record for your domain –

“v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all”

Once this is done you can add users emails in your google apps — example you can simply create email accounts like anything@yourdomain.com

How to use Google Hosted emails with Vision Helpdesk ?

Now that you have created google hosted emails – In Vision Helpdesk you can use it just like your normal emails.

In Vision Helpdesk Admin Section Admin Mail Parser Insert Queue

Add your google hosted email with Pop3 SSL or IMAP  SSL option.

In Incoming Mail Server Settings you have to set — pop.gmail.com or pop.googlemail.com

Setting up cron to fetch emails while using pop or imap

Set up a cron for every 5 mins to fetch emails –

*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/GET http://www.domainname.com/support/manage/cron.php >/dev/null 2>/dev/null

That’s it

Benefits of Using Google Hosted Emails over normal emails.

GMail

1. It is free.
2. It boasts incredible spam detection and filtering
3. It provides great ways of organizing and labeling incoming messages.
4. Conversation threads are automatically grouped, making each request easy to follow until resolution.
5. much more…