docs/website/UPGRADE_NOTES.md

# Upgrade notes — website

**Operator-facing. Newest first.** One entry per change that requires an operator to *do* something,
or that changes behaviour they would otherwise discover by accident.

Most upgrades need nothing: the schema is replayed on every boot with `IF NOT EXISTS` migrations, and
a deployment that pulls a new image and restarts is done. This file exists for the exceptions — and
the exceptions worth writing down are almost always the ones that **fail quietly**, because a loud
failure announces itself and a quiet one does not.

**Read the entries between the version you are on and the version you are moving to.** Each names the
action, whether it is required, and what happens if you do nothing.

---

## Email addresses are now unique, and some accounts may lose theirs

**Required only if the dashboard says so.** Engagement Phase 1b.

### What changed

An account's email address is now the destination for account recovery and, in time, for notification
mail, so an address may belong to **one account only**. Until now it could repeat — SSO sign-up wrote
whatever address the provider returned, without checking — so a database that has been running with
SSO enabled may well hold duplicates.

Users can now also **set and change their own address**, under *Account → Email address*, confirming
it by opening a link. Before this there was no way for anyone to change their own address at all.

### What the upgrade does on first boot

Nothing you need to trigger, and **no account is deleted**. Where several accounts share an address:

- the **earliest-created** account keeps it — not the "verified" one, because SSO used to mark an
  address verified merely for existing, so that flag cannot arbitrate anything;
- every later account has its address **cleared** (set to nothing) and is listed in a report;
- the dashboard then shows a warning naming how many accounts were affected.

Case is folded — `Foo@x.com` and `foo@x.com` are the same mailbox — but **accents are not**:
`josé@x.com` and `jose@x.com` are correctly treated as two different addresses.

### What you have to do

If the warning appears, open **Admin → Users** and read the report. It names each affected account and
the address it lost. **Those users are the reason this warning exists:** they can still sign in
normally, but they can no longer receive password-reset or notification email until they set a new
address themselves, and nothing tells them that. Contact them, and point them at *Account → Email
address*.

Dismissing the warning keeps the report — it is the record of what the upgrade did, and the only place
the lost addresses survive.

### Verification email

Confirmation links are sent through the same transport as everything else, so **if outbound email is
not configured, nobody can confirm an address.** The screen says so honestly rather than claiming a
mail was sent. If you have not configured SMTP yet, see the entry below first.

### The verification setting

A new setting, *require a confirmed address before sending notification email*, is seeded **off on an
existing deployment** and **on for a fresh install**. The asymmetry is deliberate: switching it on
retroactively would silently stop mailing every user who had already opted in, on the day you
upgraded. Nothing reads it yet — it takes effect when engagement notifications ship — so there is no
hurry to change it.

### If you do nothing

The de-duplication has already run; it runs on the first boot whether or not you read this. What you
lose by ignoring it is the chance to tell the affected users, who will otherwise discover it the next
time they try to reset a password.

### Data

Nothing is dropped and no row is deleted. `users` gains `email_norm` (a generated lowercase copy of
`email`, which carries the uniqueness index) and `email_pending`. Two tables are added:
`email_verifications` and `email_dedupe_report`. Cleared addresses survive in the report.

---

## Outbound email: the Gmail connect flow is gone; configure SMTP

**Required, if this deployment currently sends email.** Engagement Phase 1.

### What changed

The "Connect Gmail" consent flow has been **removed**. Email now sends through an ordinary mail
transport whose credentials an admin types in — SMTP is the baseline and the only transport shipped.

Removed with it: `GET /api/v1/admin/email/connect/start`, `GET /api/v1/admin/email/connect/callback`,
and email's reuse of the `google` authentication provider's client id and secret. That reuse is worth
a sentence of its own, because it was a coupling nobody could see: rotating the Google **SSO** secret
silently broke outbound **mail**, with nothing on either screen relating the two. Single sign-on is
otherwise unaffected — the `google` provider row exists for SSO in its own right and is untouched.

### What you must do

On the first boot after the upgrade, `email_config.transport` backfills to `smtp` with **no
credentials**. Until you supply some, **no mail is sent** — and nothing errors, because every sender
is written to degrade politely:

- the contact form falls back to a `mailto:` link,
- an invite returns the accept link for you to send by hand,
- a password reset still answers its usual generic success,
- Team notifications are logged and dropped.

That is the risk this note exists for: **email stops and nothing complains.** The admin dashboard
shows a warning while it is true, and the warning goes away by itself once a credential is saved.

Go to **Admin → Settings → Email**, choose the posture that fits, then use **Send test** — which is
now the real verification of the whole configuration, not a formality.

| Posture | Settings | Notes |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **A relay** — recommended | The relay's host, port `587`, *Implicit TLS* **off**, your API key as the password | Mailgun, SES, Postmark and equivalents. Reputation, DKIM and bounce handling are the relay's problem. The right answer for anything with volume |
| **Gmail over SMTP** — the shortest migration | `smtp.gmail.com`, port `587`, *Implicit TLS* **off**, your Google address as the username, and an **app password** | This is the direct replacement for the removed connect flow. It needs an [app password](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833) — 2-Step Verification must be on, and your ordinary account password will not work. Google's per-day send caps apply |
| **Your own MTA** | Its host, port `25`, *Implicit TLS* **off**, username and password left blank | For an operator already running mail on the same host |

Two fields cause most failures:

- **Implicit TLS** is *on* only for port **465**. On port 587 leave it **off** — the connection still
  upgrades to TLS, via STARTTLS. Port 587 with it on does not error; it hangs.
- **Send from** is now typed by you rather than read back from Google, so nothing guarantees the
  server will accept it. It must be an address the account is allowed to send as, or the mail is
  refused for SPF/DMARC reasons that look like nothing at all. Send test names this specifically when
  it happens.

### If you do nothing

Mail stays off. Nothing breaks and no data is lost — the site, the admin panel, logins, SSO and the
shard integration all behave exactly as before. The dashboard warning stays up until you either
configure a transport or press **Clear credentials**, which is how you say "this deployment
deliberately sends no mail".

### Data

Nothing is dropped. `email_config` gains `transport`, `credential_enc` and `reply_to`; the old
`provider` and `refresh_token_enc` columns are kept but no longer read. Your stored Gmail refresh
token is not used again and is cleared the first time you press **Clear credentials**.