Configure SMTP for outbound emails

Configure the email settings in the /opt/bitnami/openproject/config/configuration.yml file.

A sample configuration for a Gmail account is shown below. Replace USERNAME and PASSWORD with your Gmail account username and password respectively.

production:
  email_delivery_method: "smtp"
  smtp_enable_starttls_auto: true
  smtp_address: "smtp.gmail.com"
  smtp_port: 587
  smtp_domain: "smtp.gmail.com"
  smtp_authentication: :plain
  smtp_openssl_verify_mode: "none"
  smtp_user_name: USERNAME@gmail.com
  smtp_password: PASSWORD

Once the configuration.yml file is changed, you need to restart Apache.

$ sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart apache

To receive all notifications, set an extra configuration value in the administration panel. Click the “Administration -> My account -> Email notifications” menu item and set “For any event on all my projects”.

To change the OpenProject URL value of the sent emails, navigate to “Administration -> Settings -> General” and change the “Host name” value.

To configure the application to use the SMTP service provided by Amazon Simple Email Service (SES), refer to the guide on using Amazon SES.

NOTE: Amazon EC2 blocks SMTP port 25 by default on all Amazon EC2 instances, and you must manually request removal of this restriction to use this port.

To configure the application to use other third-party SMTP services for outgoing email, such as SendGrid, refer to the FAQ.

NOTE: If you are using Gmail as the outbound email server, your application’s attempts to send outgoing emails may be blocked by Gmail if it considers the authentication attempts to be suspicious. When this happens, you will receive a Gmail security alert at the corresponding Gmail address. To proceed, you will need to manually confirm the validity of the authentication attempt before Gmail will permit the application to send outbound emails. For more information on this and other Gmail issues related to outbound email from your application, refer to our Gmail SMTP troubleshooting page.