889483 - Filtering incoming emails on server side based on the date (procmail-like)

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Infrastructure & Operations Graveyard :: Infrastructure: Zimbra, task)

Description

[Peter ONeill [:zero]]

This came into the service desk mailbox wasn't exactly sure if it was possible or not so I thought I post it here.

________________________________________

Hi,

This is my first day today, July 2, 2013. Thanks for setting up the Zimbra email account. 
My manager is Lawrence Mandel.

I'm not familiar with all Zimbra configurations, but I started to RTFM. On the Preferences panel, I found the mail filters panel but didn't any obvious way to replicate my usual setup.

For my imap folders, I usually use procmail for server side filtering. I use only one rule, which is sorting the mails in a dated space as they arrive. All mails of July will go in the folder 2013/07, and so on. When the yearly/monthly folder doesn't exist, it is being created on the fly.

My usual settings are:

==========================================
karl# cat .procmailrc

VERBOSE=OFF

MAILDIR=$HOME/mail
PMDIR=$HOME/.procmail

LOGFILE=$PMDIR/procmail.log

MONTH=`date +%Y/%m`
YEAR=`date +%Y`
umask 022

:0 ic
* ? test ! -d $MAILDIR/$YEAR
| mkdir -p $MAILDIR/$YEAR

:0:
*
$MAILDIR/$MONTH
==========================================


Is it something which would be compatible with Zimbra and/or implementable in Zimbra? You can slap me with a link if I have missed the obvious in the documentation. 

Thanks.
Cheers.


-- 
Karl Dubost, Mozilla

Comment 1

[Ed Lim [:limed]]

I'm not sure if zimbra can do what you are looking for, if you are using a text based mail client like pine or mutt with offlineimap its probably possible for you to use procmail. 

However that will mean that you will only be doing filtering on the client side of things and any filters done locally is not reflected on the server, if you wish to replicate your setup right now I think pine/mutt + offlineimap + procmail is your best bet.

Comment 2

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Usually procmail is playing hand in hand with the delivery system (SMTP or Postfix for example). So in my case every incoming email is put at the relevant place based on their date. 

Zimbra seemed to be the only accessible thing on Mozilla systems. On my own mail server, I handle it at the sendmail level. The question is not tied to Zimbra, but on how to have the incoming mail redirected in a folder based on the sent date. I'm currently using Mail.app One painful way of doing it is to create an Applescript filter listening to the inbox and filtering all mails to folders that will get resync to the imap server. :) But that's the thing I wanted to avoid ;)

Comment 3

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

Attachment: Script to filter incoming mails by date in Mail.app with Applescript

ok As it seems it will not be possible on the server side (Postfix it seems for Mozilla). I played with AppleScript and got a working script.

The script is at 
https://gist.github.com/karlcow/6011345

Here in attachment.

Comment 4

[Justin Dolske [:Dolske]]

FYI, Zimbra does do server-side filtering. From the web login, click "Preferences" at the top and then "Filters" on the left sidebar.

I switched all my filtering over a couple years ago (from Thunderbird's own filters), so that I could read mail on mobile without having a clogged inbox because my laptop client was offline.

Comment 5

[Karl Dubost💡 :karlcow]

(In reply to Justin Dolske [:Dolske] from comment #4)
> FYI, Zimbra does do server-side filtering. From the web login, click
> "Preferences" at the top and then "Filters" on the left sidebar.
> 
> I switched all my filtering over a couple years ago (from Thunderbird's own
> filters), so that I could read mail on mobile without having a clogged inbox
> because my laptop client was offline.

It doesn't do what I want or I didn't find. ;)

Aka filter any incoming emails to a dated folder.
Aka any emails coming on August 2013 are automatically put in /2013/08/
If the folder doesn't exist the script creates it

Comment 6

[:Atoll]

(In reply to Karl Dubost :karlcow from comment #5)
> Aka filter any incoming emails to a dated folder.
> Aka any emails coming on August 2013 are automatically put in /2013/08/
> If the folder doesn't exist the script creates it

You can upvote this feature request at Zimbra, it's been around since 2009 but that's no indication of rejection, either.

http://bugzilla.zimbra.com/show_bug.cgi?id=34576