Needed to know if there was a way for a TroopTrack account user to be able to receive an email from an external email account that is not associated with the Troop? We are new users and we were setting up a training event for Webelos and other 5th to 6th graders to join us. We needed to create a generic email address - it’s a lot easier to deal with a generic email address for us to give out, then to give out a personal email address or to create a new one. Well, when we “created” a generic one in TroopTrack, we discovered that only a TroopTrack user would only be able to send to it and no one else. So, is there a way for us to receive email to a TroopTrack email address from an external email account?
This is exactly what mailboxes are for (Communicate -> Mailboxes). Anyone can send to them.
Correction: Mailboxes cannot receive email from outside of TroopTrack at the moment.
However, I did test it out with my work email and the email bounced back from TroopTrack stating that, “We couldn’t find a TroopTrack account associated with the email address used to send this message.” I also have tested the my other email address from a gmail account and it behaved the same way. My attempt is to have an external address not associated with any TroopTrack account to be received by a TroopTrack subscriber.
For example, I created the following mailbox:
Mailboxes Send an Email New Mailbox
Mailbox Address Recipients
example_mailbox@trooptrack.com Johnny Gogue III
Edit Delete
and I emailed from my gmail account - which is not associated with my TroopTrack profile - and got the following:
From: TroopTrack Notifier noreply@trooptrack.com
Date: 4/30/16 12:37 AM (GMT-08:00)
To: example_personal_email@gmail.com
Subject: List Message: Test Could Not Be Sent
We couldn’t find a TroopTrack account associated with the email address used to send this message. TroopTrack email lists are only for use by registered members using the email address tied to their account. Please correct this problem and try again.
Please do not reply to this message.
Thanks!
I am looking to have external emails coming in from people not associated with our Troop and be able to make contact with us through a TroopTrack email address. Is there a way to do that?
Please let me know. Thank you.
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Ah, you are right. I mis-spoke. Mailboxes are for anyone in the troop to send to. I’ll have to think about how to support receiving emails from non-registered email addresses.
I was pretty tired when I responded, and I should have double-checked first. Sorry.
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I’ve added this to our to-do list. It is issue #1467.
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I had this same issue with non-member email accounts. We would like to have a contact feature for those that wanted info about our troop. I was told to enter this discussion.
I understand the issue about how difficult it can be to have a non-registered email in the TT system.
What about having one external email per client based on their domain. It would be like troop170@trooptrack.com.
Another option for us would be to have a contact page that the outside user can fill out for us to reply to. Like your contact page. They fill it out on our site, and it gets routed to a distribution list.
I have searched for other related threads, but have not found any yet.
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The biggest problem with this idea in our current setup is that we allow troops to have distribution lists with the same name. This only works because we identify who the user is by the email they send from. In order to create a public email address we would need to make sure it is unique system wide. That’s not really that big a deal, now that I type it out… this happens sometimes. Things seem hard until I try to explain them to someone else.
This idea is totally growing on me. @Spencer, what do you think? Want to work on it next week?
Well like I originally suggested, give us an open email based on our account name@trooptrack.com. Ooh how about using periods so General.Troop170@trooptrack.com. just a thought.
We already make sure that subdomains are unique. Could we just use subdomain@trooptrack.com to create valid emails?
The reason I thought we didn’t do this was spam, which we wouldn’t be able to protect against very well. Troops would be vulnerable to getting phony emails from Nigerian princes and whatnot.
Other than the spam problem, it sounds like a neat idea. 
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Hi, I think that I am having the same problem. We set up a mailbox called TreasurerXXXX@trooptrack.com to use with paypal so that all paypal emails would go to our treasurer and committee chair. None of the emails from paypal seem to come through. Is it impossible for paypal emails to be sent to this address?
Hi @TMSlaton. No, mailboxes can’t receive emails from Paypal, only from other members of TroopTrack.
How about adding an option to mailboxes to allow email from external sources? You could put a warning about spam, but this would allow users to have some flexibility on how to handle new member prospects, PayPal/Stripe notifications, etc. It’s kind of similar to the “Any member is allowed to send emails to this list” setting on magic mailing lists.
Thanks.
I would want a group to keep a contact information to be more generic and evergreen. So as people who change roles - the email notifications would be the same.
For example - we would register our contact information at Council to be: Scoutmaster@TroopDomain.trooptrack.email."
Or put on our website for membership information requests to “Membership@TroopDomain.Trooptrack.email”
etc…
This feature use to work. Do you have any suggestions on what I can do to receive emails from people who aren’t members of the Troop?
3 Likes
This “mailbox” feature seemed like a winner until I found out I couldn’t send to one from outside of TroopTrack.
I don’t know the status of issue 1467, but I’d like to echo the powerful need for this feature - just moved my cub scout pack over, and this is the absolute wrong time to figure out that this is not working as expected.
Thank you for whatever you can do to provide status or move this feature request up in the list.
Would it be possible to send from an external address to "mailbox@subdomain.trooptrack.com" ?
Mike
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Yes this is probably my most anticipated item on communication.
If the mailboxes could receive email from any external address - it would help with how we would recruit. The local elementary schools send out email blasts and facebook updates about our “Join Boy Scouts - contact info = mailbox@subdomain.trooptrack.com”
Now it goes to a secondary personal email address on gmail. Would love to have it be “annoymous” Scoutmaster@subdomain.trooptrack.com
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Big, HUGE want!
It has my vote to be sure.
We are just going into recruiting season.
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This would be a great addition.
The cub scout pack that my boys were in used a competing web site. Each subdomain had a small set of mailboxes that could be changed to forward to appropriate person/group. e.g. scoutmaster@mytroopsubdomain.competingservice.us or webmaster@mytrooopsubdomain.competingservice.us
This really aided in recruiting and when positions changed. Mailing the cubmaster was always the same address even when a new cubmaster took over.
Please bump this up on your priority list – as a previous poster mentioned, recruiting season is upon us.
Thanks
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Everyone interested in moving this up in the priority list should be “liking” the relevant post in the Ideas forum.
Mike
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Definitely want this feature. We moved to this platform from another web hosting company and need a way to allow the public to send us a message about interest in our pack. I just tried to set up the mailbox to do that and was disappointed when I got the bounce message upon testing from an external account.
What’s the status on this?
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We definitely need this. At this point I need to go out to a separate email tool (gmail) and set up an account to receive requests from external people who are interested in our Troop. This is a big gap for us.
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