Configuring Email using Gmail

The below configuration is tested with the app built from the guide at Instructions for Installation on Amazon Elastic Beanstalk and RDS, but should be generally applicable.

Email is used by LimeSurvey for password retrieval, as well as:

• invitations
• reminders
• confirmations
• admin notifications
• detailed admin notifications

For more on configuring email templates per questionnaire, refer to https://manual.limesurvey.org/Email_templates

Prerequisites:

• You have admin access to a working customized LimeSurvey installation
• You have a Gmail address and password
• Optional - an active questionnaire with Tokens enabled (see Closed Access Mode) will allow you to easily confirm if you configured your email account successfully

Instructions:

1. Log in to your questionnaire site, click "Global Settings", then "Email Settings" tab, change "Email method" to SMTP, change "SMTP host" to smtp.gmail.com:587, "SMTP SSL/TLS" to TLS, replace "SMTP username" with your Gmail address, and "SMTP Password" with your Gmail password. If you have enabled two-step verification for your Gmail account, you must create and use an app specific password. Click "Save Settings".

1. To test that you've configured email correctly, navigate to an active survey with tokens, and click the mail icon next to a token record.

1. Modify the email body if you'd like, then click "Send Invitations"

1. If you see the message "All emails were sent", you've successfully configured email capabilities.