Using GMail as SMTP / POP in Qlik Applications - Impending Breaking Issue

[stevedark]

Hi,

There are many articles and solutions, including many that I have written, that suggest the use of GMail for sending or receiving emails into Qlik. It looks like that may be about to break.

For some time now it has been required that you turn on Less Secure App Access in your Google Account to allow this to happen.

Ominously, on setting this up recently the following message appeared:

Looking at the "find out more" link goes to this page:
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6010255?hl=en-GB&authuser=1

This says that come the end of next month the option will no longer be available and all accounts will have this setting off. This will break any place that a Google Workspace account is being used for sending or receiving mail in Qlik.

I have tested using the mail settings in Qlik Sense SaaS QMC:

Also with the SMTP connector within Qlik Sense SaaS, the IMAP connector in Qlik Sense SaaS and also the SMTP connector in Qlik Web Connectors.

All of these break when Less Secure Apps in the Google Account is turned off, and the likelihood is that they will not work after May 31st.

My guess is that the same fate awaits NPrinting and QlikView QMC alerts as well.

As far as I can see at the moment, organisations who run on Google Workspace are going to be stuck when it comes to using their mail system with Qlik. This also goes for individuals who use their GMail accounts for sending mails.

Hopefully this will be another thing that Google postpone if enough people point out it is going to cause issues, but they have certainly sunset functionality and products that are widely used in the past.

If anyone has any suggestions or solutions on how to deal with this please comment below.

Many thanks,

Steve

[stevedark · Accepted solution]

Just found the solution to this on the Community:
https://community.qlik.com/t5/Knowledge/How-to-send-emails-from-your-Gmail-account-with-SMTP-with-Ql...

Instead of using a standard username and password, you need to turn on 2FA for the account you are using and then use an Application Password, following these instructions:
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833

Steve

[stevedark]

I've provided a little more documentation around this in this blog post:

https://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/google-smtp-and-imap-to-break-gmail/

Steve