email is a revolutionary way to communicate with people! It has had a huge impact on society, through the way humans communicate. it has reduced the use of traditional mail and has been instrumental in creating an entirely new communication system. For example, many people receive all their bills and payments through email instead of the post office. A study by the Radicati Group, Inc. concludes that email has replaced 92% of written letters as a means of personal communication. one of the most popular email services is gmail.
gmail is a free email service provided by google that provides you various features like automatic email filtering, smart reply, email notifications, etc. Although gmail works perfectly, it is generally recommended to have gmail webhook integration for your account. gmail webhook integration enhances gmail features and gives you the ability to send notifications for specific events.
This article will introduce you to the gmail webhook integration. it will also provide you with a complete guide to help you integrate gmail webhook manually.
index
- prerequisites
- getting started with gmail
- getting started with webhooks
- steps to configure the gmail webhook integration
- step 1: create the topic
- step 2: set up a topic subscription
- step 3: grant gmail privileges to your topic
- step 4: set up the gmail account to send notifications
requirements
The following are the prerequisites for configuring the gmail webhooks integration:
- a gmail account.
- complete the cloud publish/subscribe prerequisites. cloud pub/sub api is the gmail api that sends push notifications.
- set up a cloud pub/sub client.
introduction to gmail
gmail, in simple terms, is an email service provided by google for free. With Gmail, you can send and receive emails and perform other basic email-related tasks like creating an address book, blocking spam, etc. is one of the most popular and widely used online email services in the world.
key features of gmail
the following are some of the key features of gmail:
- It is possible to get your gmail address even if you don’t have a google account. For example, you can log in to Gmail using your Yahoo, Hotmail, or any other email address.
- Gmail gives you 1GB of free storage space that you can use to send and receive emails.
- gmail connects to google sites, giving you privacy-conscious options for preserving your emails.
- you have the option to use pop3 or imap4 protocol in gmail. pop3 is available when connected to internet, but imap4 is available when not connected to internet.
- you can click the “forward” button on your email to send it to another folder, create a new message regarding an existing message or an attachment.
To learn more about gmail and its features, click here.
intro to webhooks
Image Source Webhooks, in simple terms, are one of the ways that applications use to interact with each other. They send automated notifications (in real-time) whenever a given event occurs. Webhooks are now a standard feature used by many different services, such as Gmail, GitHub, Slack, etc.
Let’s say you have an application that tracks when a person checks into your restaurant. Now that you have such an app, you want to trigger a specific event when someone enters or leaves your restaurant. With webhooks, you get notified when someone enters or leaves your restaurant. you can work it to your advantage and configure your app to trigger a particular event when that happens. Below is a simplified view of webhooks in action.
For more information on webhooks, click here.
steps to configure gmail webhook integration
Image Source Now that you have a basic understanding of Webhooks and how they work, it is time for Gmail Webhook Integration and using it to your advantage. Gmail already has pre-installed Webhooks that usually provide you with Server Push Notifications. You can use Gmail Webhook Integration to overwatch the changes happening to your Gmail mailboxes.
The gmail webhook integration improves gmail performance, eliminates extra network, calculates costs associated with polling resources, and determines what changes happen to your gmail account. Follow the steps below to set up the gmail webhook integration for your business:
- Step 1: Create the theme
- Step 2: Set up a subscription to the theme
- Step 3: Grant gmail privileges to your theme
- step 4: configure gmail account to send notifications
step 1: create the theme
Using your cloud publish/subscribe client that you should have created as a prerequisite, create the topic that you want the gmail webhook to send notifications to. there is no restriction on the topic name. you can have any theme name in your project. for example, projects/myprojects/mytheme/*, where “myproject” is the project id.
Note: It is recommended to use a single topic for all gmail webhook push notifications because cloud pub/sub has a quota limit on the number of topics.
step 2: set up a topic subscription
In this step, you need to set up a subscription to the topic you created in the last step. Click the link below for a detailed description of how to set up a subscription to the created topic. this is a necessary step because this is how your app will receive notifications for all future updates.
note: set the subscription type to either of the following 2 options:
- webhook push (ie http post callback)
- webhook pull (ie started by your application)
step 3: grant gmail privileges to your theme
cloud pub/sub requires gmail privileges to publish notifications to your topic. more specifically, you need to grant gmail push privileges to [email protected]. You can accomplish this using the cloud publish/subscribe developer console by following the resource-level access control instructions which you can refer to via this link.
There are 3 options when granting access to gmail privileges:
- access by topic or by subscription.
- access with limited capabilities . for example, only post messages to a topic, only consume messages, etc.
- access all cloud publish/subscribe resourceswithin a project.
step 4: configure the gmail account to send notifications
Once you’re done with the steps above, you need to set up your gmail account to send notifications to your cloud pub/sub topic. this can be done by using the gmail api client to call the watch() function. Below is the sample code you can use to configure your gmail account to send notifications:
if the above code executes successfully, you will get a response like this:
note: all changes after the “historyid” you will receive in response, will be notified below. also, it is very important to call the watch() function again at least every 7 days. otherwise, it will stop receiving updates.
that’s it! you can successfully set up gmail webhook integration and can use it effectively as part of your business.
conclusion
The article introduced you to gmail webhook integration and also provided you with a complete step by step guide to manually integrate gmail webhook. With the complexity of manual integration, companies are turning to automated integration. It is simple, easy to operate and does not require any technical knowledge. In such a case, hevo data is the best option for you!
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Share your experience setting up the gmail webhook integration in the comments section below!