Unclear error message: Update users email via API

[mason-buettner]

Fleet version: 4.75.1

Web browser and operating system: Chrome 141 on macOS 26.0.1

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💥  Actual behavior

With mail not configured, when I attempt to update the email of a user via PATCH /api/v1/fleet/users/:id I receive the 500 error message "email not configured".

🛠️ To fix

UPDATE: @noahtalerman: Followup PR based on @iansltx's feedback.

• @noahtalerman: I update the error message (PR here) but I didn't test/QA the fix myself.

🧑‍💻  Steps to reproduce

1. Attempt to use PATCH /api/v1/fleet/users/:id to update the email field.

[brotich]

Took a look at the scenario that might lead to the issue above.

on a normal flow, a confirmation email is sent to the new email address for the user to verify the newly added email address.

in this case however, it looks like the email sending has not been set up on the customer's instance. This causes the email address change to fail with the message above.

To resolve this, two options are:

1. advice the customer to set up smtp for their instance

I'm not sure if this is unclear documentation or a bug.

IMO, this should be a bug as an email should be sent after the email change is set up.. On further thinking, this should be a documentation update to make sure that email smtp settings are configured.

[sharon-fdm]

@mason-buettner, I'm assuming this was not reproduced by you and alpplying the reproduce label.

[mason-buettner]

Hi @sharon-fdm! I did reproduce before filing the bug report.

[sharon-fdm]

Thanks @mason-buettner ! ❤️