CAMRA Branch Hosting Server

Introduction

Gmail is a popular Email service provided by Google, used by many people for their own personal email accounts. Gmail, through both the web-based version and various Apps, can be configured to receive and send emails from third-party email accounts, such as your CAMRA email account. Gmail can then be configured to then send your CAMRA emails back through our server. This guide aims to walk you through implementing this, and then sending/receiving CAMRA emails on your Web & iOS/Android Apps.

When you connect your CAMRA address with the Gmail service, by default Gmail will integrate all of your personal emails, along with the CAMRA emails. There is however, a way of labelling your CAMRA emails with a custom label. If you are unsure how to create labels, simply follow our simple guide to this here.

We suggest following these steps on a PC, but once this has been configured, you will be able to send/receive CAMRA emails from any Gmail App, including iOS/Android Apps. You may need to force close & re-open your iOS/Android App to get the App to pickup these the changes.

Login to your Gmail account from a PC and click the settings 'cog' in the top right corner. Now click on 'See all Settings'.

Within the Settings section, now click 'Accounts and Import'.

Under the 'Check email from other accounts' section, click the 'Add an email account'.

We will now start configuring the email account that is to be added. The following actions will now take place in a pop-up window. In the first box, please enter the CAMRA email address that you wish to add, and then click 'Next'.

In the next screen, Google is informing us that this account cannot be added using its 'Gmailify' service. This service enables you to use Gmail, without the need to have an '@gmail.com' address and works with most other well-known providers such as Yahoo Mail & Outlook. Unfortunately, CAMRA isn't on this list, so it is prompting us to import emails using the POP3 method. Simply click 'Next' to accept this.

We now need to tell Google about the settings to access the Hosting server. I have explained the individual fields here:
- Email Address - This will have been filled in for you, but just make sure it is correct.
- Username - Re-enter your '@example.camra.org.uk' email address.
- Password - Enter the password for your CAMRA email address.
- POP Server - Gmail will automatically get the Domain, but we need to alter this. Simply change this to match your Branch email address: @example.camra.org.uk
- Port - 995
- Ensure that 'Always use a secure connection' is ticked. Click 'Add Account' once you are done. Gmail will now try and connect to the server. If there are any errors, it will prompt you.
- Note - If there will be two or more people using this method to collect emails from this address, we suggest that you tick the option for 'Leave a copy of retrieved messages on the server'. By default, Google will remove any emails that it downloads from the Plesk Server. If you tick this box, please remember to periodically remove old messages from your CAMRA mailbox.

If you want to add a label to all incoming emails from this address, simply click on the drop-down box next to 'Label incoming messages'. If you already have a label created, you can select it from this drop down. Alternatively, click 'New' and then enter the name of the label when prompted. Labelling will aid you in identifying which emails are from your CAMRA account, and which are regular emails sent to your Gmail account.

When it has been added, Gmail will prompt you. It will now ask if you want to be able to send via this address too. If you do, leave 'Yes' selected, and then click 'Next' and continue onto step 9. Other wise you can now skip to step 11.

We are now going to configure Gmail to send email via the Hosting server. The first stage is to enter how you would like your name to appear on all outgoing emails.

Name - This is Name the recipients will see in their Inbox as the sender. Enter the 'Name' that you would like the recipients to see in their Inbox.
Click 'Next Step' when you are finished.

Gmail will now ask for the outgoing server settings.

SMTP Server - Ensure this matches the Domain you used earlier, and should match 'example.camra.org.uk'.
Username - As with the incoming settings, the username will be your @example.camra.org.uk email address.
Password - Enter the password for your CAMRA email address.
Port - 465
Ensure that 'Secured connection using SSL' is selected
Click 'Add Account' when you have finished.

Gmail now needs to verify that you own this account, and will have sent an email to your personal Gmail account with a confirmation code. This email should come through to your Gmail inbox. As explained, either click the link contained within the email, or enter the respective code and then click 'Verify'.

Once clicked, Gmail will then start syncing the emails stored on the server into your Gmail account. If you have setup a label for these emails, then these will show with your label. Gmail only periodically checks for new email from the Plesk server, so this could take a minute or two to show up.

Once the account has been added, Gmail will show this connection inside your 'Accounts and Import' settings. Please verify these settings are correct as per the above. We do advise you keep 'Reply from the same address to which the message was sent' selected, this will ensure your personal Gmail address is never exposed as the emails will be sent from your CAMRA address instead of your personal address.

Whilst every effort has been made to ensure the instructions are correct, Google may change the process slightly in the future. If you do have any issues adding your CAMRA account, please drop us a line to: support@hosting.camra.org.uk.