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Guide to setting up Conversation Continuity with SendGrid

This doc will help you set up Conversation continuity with SendGrid.

Installation​

This example is based on a Heroku installation of UniLink, and using SendGrid for outgoing email. For more information about installing UniLink, go here.

Configuring inbound reply emails​

Firstly, we need to tell our UniLink instance what mailer we're using to handle incoming emails. We do that with a config var. Go to your Heroku dashboard, click on your UniLink instance and click settings.

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Then scroll until you see two blank fields with an add button. There, enter:

RAILS_INBOUND_EMAIL_SERVICE = sendgrid;

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Next, we're going to set a password. We'll use this later on with SendGrid. For this example, we'll use something simple - like potatosalad, but like all passwords - you should always use a secure mixture of letters, numbers and symbols.

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SendGrid​

Now we're going to set up the domain we're using for inbound emails. Because you're most likely going to have an email service like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 for Business, you should use a subdomain for your inbound emails to UniLink.

For example, let's say we used support.example.com as our domain. In this instance, we'd add an MX record pointing support.example.com to mx.sendgrid.net with a priority of 10.

You should wait a while (usually an hour will do). You can use mxtoolbox.com to check if the MX record has been propogated. If you see something like this, you can move onto the next step:

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Now, go to the SendGrid dashboard at app.sendgrid.com. Select Settings, and Inbound Parse.

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Then click "Add Host & URL".

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Receiving Subdomain should be the domain you set up the MX record for earlier.

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Then add your Destination URL. Your Destination URL should look something like this:

https://actionmailbox:potatosalad@chatwoot.example.com/rails/action_mailbox/sendgrid/inbound_emails

potatosalad is the password we set earlier, and chatwoot.example.com is the URL of our UniLink instance. Everything else should stay the same.

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info

Make sure to check "POST the raw, full MIME message". In order to function correctly, Action Mailbox needs the raw MIME message.

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Setting the inbound domain variable in Heroku​

Finally, we need to tell our UniLink installation what domain we're using with SendGrid.

Your variable should look like this:

MAILER_INBOUND_EMAIL_DOMAIN = support.example.com;

You should change support.example.com to the domain you used with SendGrid.

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Next steps​

You're done! Next, you should enable the email channel.