Optimizing the configuration of the email queues

Once you have set up at least one email queue in GFI HelpDesk, it is worth taking a look at some of your system-wide settings, to make sure your queues are operating at optimum efficiency.

In this topic, you can look at some of the settings that you should be aware of to keep things running smoothly.

Optimizing your email settings

Within the admin control panel, you can find a handful of system-wide settings under Email Parser and then Settings on the sidebar.

On the page that opens up, you can see a long list of email configuration options. We would not go over all of them in this article since they apply to a variety of different email-related processes. Instead, we focus on the settings that are most critical for safeguarding the performance of your email queues.

• Maximum number of emails to download in a batch

  Right up top, under the POP3Post Office Protocol 3 - A protocol used by local email clients to retrieve emails from mailboxes over a TCP/IP connection./IMAPInternet Message Access Protocol - One of the two most commonly used Internet standard protocols for e-mail retrieval, the other being POP3. Email Download Settings heading, this setting controls the maximum number of emails fetched into GFI HelpDesk any time it checks an email queue. By default its set to '20', which is fine if your helpdesk has a small number of queues and doesn't routinely fetch large email attachments.

  If, however, you find yourself with a large number of queues and regular email attachments exceeding 8 MB, we recommend changing this setting to '10' or lower.

  NOTE:

  If you do not adjust this setting to accommodate a large number of queues or large attachments, it can significantly impact the performance of your helpdesk.

• Email size limit

  Next, on the list, this setting lets you restrict the size of each email coming into GFI HelpDesk. Any incoming email that exceeds this size limit is not fetched from your email server. These limits include the email's content and attachments.

  The default is 2048 KB, and the only max is that it cannot exceed the php_memory_limit value set in your php.ini file. That being said, we do not recommend setting a high limit here. The larger the attachments you receive, the higher the risk that your helpdesk's performance suffers.

• Prioritize email content type

  You can find this setting in the middle of the Email Parser Settings section:

  

  Email parser settings

  Here, you can control whether GFI HelpDesk captures any HTML formatting from incoming emails. You can see that the page says 'Plain text highly recommended' and while that used to be the case, capturing HTML formatting has become the standard for most of our users.

  So, to allow GFI HelpDesk to capture HTML content from incoming emails set this to 'HTML.'

  You have to visit Tickets and then Settings on the admin sidebar and make a couple of changes there. In the middle of the page, you are looking for these:

  

  Ticket settings

  With Prioritize email content type plus the two HTML handling options set, GFI HelpDesk is able to capture any HTML formatting from incoming emails and render it in your support tickets.

• Maximum email log size

  The last setting back on the Settings: Email Parser page, this one lets you establish a maximum size (in kilobytes) for the email logs that GFI HelpDesk retains. Any parser log that exceeds this limit is discarded.

  By default, this limit is set to '50,' but we recommend you increase it up to 5000 KB so that your logs for larger emails are also stored. Having these logs can be critical when trying to diagnose email parser issues.