How to use IBM App Connect with Gmail
Gmail is Google's free web-based email service that provides storage for emails, chat, and archiving.
Use IBM® App Connect to connect Gmail to other applications like Slack. For example, when emails are received in Gmail, you are notified immediately in Slack.
Cloud-managed connector
Local
connector in containers (Continuous Delivery release)
Local connector in containers (Extended User Support release)-
Local connector in containers (Long Term Support release)
Connecting to Gmail
To connect App Connect to Gmail, you can use the website OAuth 2.0 authorization method. You need to provide an OAuth 2.0 client ID, client secret, and update the authorized redirect URI for your Google application. For more information, see Connecting to a Google application using the website OAuth 2.0 authorization method.
To connect App Connect to Gmail, you can also use basic authentication with OAuth credentials. You need to provide an OAuth 2.0 client ID, client secret, access token, and refresh token with selected scopes for Google APIs. For more information, see Getting OAuth client ID, client secret, access token, and refresh token for Google applications.
To connect to Gmail from the Catalog page of the App Connect Designer for the first time, expand Gmail, then click Connect. For more information about ways to connect to Gmail, see Managing accounts in App Connect.
Before you use the account that is created in App Connect in a flow, rename the account to something meaningful that helps you to identify it. To rename the account on the Catalog page, select the account, open its options menu (⋮), then click Rename Account.
What to consider first
- (General consideration) You can see lists of the trigger events and
actions that are available on the Catalog page of the App Connect Designer.
For some applications, the events and actions in the catalog depend on the environment (IBM Cloud Pak for Integration or App Connect on IBM Cloud) and whether the connector supports configurable events and dynamic discovery of actions. If the application supports configurable events, you see a Show more configurable events link under the events list. If the application supports dynamic discovery of actions, you see a Show more link under the actions list.
- (General consideration) If you are using multiple accounts for an application, the set of fields that is displayed when you select an action for that application can vary for different accounts. In the flow editor, some applications always provide a curated set of static fields for an action. Other applications use dynamic discovery to retrieve the set of fields that are configured on the instance that you are connected to. For example, if you have two accounts for two instances of an application, the first account might use settings that are ready for immediate use. However, the second account might be configured with extra custom fields.
- The New email event can process emails up to 10MB.
Events and actions
Gmail events
These events are for changes in this application that trigger a flow to start performing the actions in the flow.
- Emails
-
- New email
Gmail actions
These are actions on this application that you want a flow to complete.
- Emails
-
- Send email
- Delete email
- Retrieve emails
- Update email labels
- The ability to add attachments is available only in an instance of App Connect Designer 12.0.5.0-r3 or later.
- If you are using App Connect Designer in containers and your workflow expects frequent large payloads, the default value of the memory upper limit for running the designerflows container might be too low. You can increase this value by updating the spec.integrationServer.containers.designerflows.resources.limits.memory setting in the Designer custom resource. For more information on the default values for this parameter, see Custom resource values.
Examples
- Templates for IBM App Connect Designer. In App Connect on IBM Cloud, you can find examples of using Gmail in App Connect in the Templates gallery.
- Tutorials for App Connect Designer
Use templates to quickly create flows for Gmail.
Learn how to use App Connect templates to create flows that connect Gmail to other applications. For example, open the Templates gallery, then search for Gmail.