A complete guide to understanding email in Zendesk - Part 2: Incoming email requests and notifications

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<div class="front-matter"><div class="note fastpath">
<span class="fastpathtitle">Location: </span> <span class="ph">Admin Center &gt; Channels &gt; Talk and email &gt; Email</span>
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<p class="sidenav-heading">Articles in the series</p>
<ul class="nav nav-underline flex-column">
<li class="li">
<a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4887918604058">Introduction: A complete guide to understanding email in Zendesk</a>
</li>
<li class="li">
<a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408888639258">Part 1: How the email channel works</a>
</li>
<li class="li">
<a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408887388058">Part 2: Incoming email requests and notifications</a>
</li>
<li class="li">
<a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408893474202">Part 3: Outgoing email notifications</a>
</li>
<li class="li">
<a class="nav-link" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408887479834">Part 4: Common email channel problems</a>
</li>
</ul>
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<div class="body">

<div class="p">

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<div class="p">In <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408888639258" target="_blank">Part 1</a> of this guide, we explained the essentials of how the email
channel works. In part 2 we explain how incoming support requests via email are handled and
how to customize the incoming email channel workflow. <ul class="ul" id="topic-1__ul_hng_hlp_vcb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_v3b_zfd_v3">Choosing the email addresses you want to
use to receive support requests</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_f4r_8hs_v4">Understanding how incoming emails set the
ticket requester</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_r1f_4gd_v3">Understanding how incoming emails are
matched to tickets</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_uv2_331_53">Spam filtering and suspended
tickets</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_krx_lrp_vcb">Controlling who can use email to create
tickets</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_zgl_1sp_vcb">Managing user accounts created by email
requests</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_hgh_5sp_vcb">Disabling rich content in incoming email
notifications</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_wcp_ysp_vcb">Understanding how a customer’s language is
detected</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_mtr_htp_vcb">Including other people as a CC or
follower</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title2" class="topic nested1" id="topic_v3b_zfd_v3">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title2">Choosing the email addresses you want to use to receive support requests</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">One support address is created for you by default in your account. This system support
address is support@<em class="ph i">yoursubdomain</em>.zendesk.com. The <em class="ph i">yoursubdomain</em> portion of the
address is your <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408883411354#topic_swn_h2f_3xb" target="_blank">Zendesk subdomain</a>. However, you can provide your
users with alternative email addresses for submitting tickets by adding other support
addresses and by forwarding email into your Zendesk account from external email systems.</p>
<p class="p">You can receive support requests through multiple email addresses simultaneously. The email
addresses you use to receive support requests are referred to as <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408842868506#topic_wg1_1zk_zm" target="_blank"><em class="ph i">support addresses</em></a>. If you use multiple
support addresses, one of them is set as the default support address.</p>
<div class="p">There are several ways to customize the email addresses that you use to receive support
requests using support addresses:<ul class="ul" id="topic_v3b_zfd_v3__ul_l2l_xxg_vsb">
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_tpt_nmp_vcb">Changing the user name of your default support email address</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_j3c_zmp_vcb">Allowing any user name to be a valid support email address</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_z5y_fnp_vcb">Using an external email domain instead of your Zendesk email domain</a></li>
<li class="li"><a class="xref" href="#topic_nqx_wnp_vcb">Agent email forwarding and redirecting</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title3" class="topic nested2" id="topic_dzh_dmp_vcb">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title3">Anatomy of an email address</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Before showing you how you can customize your support email addresses, here’s a quick
overview of the elements of an email address.</p>
<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_dzh_dmp_vcb__image_wll_mbx_vcb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/email_parts.png"></p>
<p class="p">The friendly name, referred to in Zendesk simply as ‘name,’ is optional and is usually
the full name of your business or organization. The user name, technically known as the
<em class="ph i">local-part</em>, is the word that precedes the @ character. The domain can be either
your Zendesk domain or an external domain.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title4" class="topic nested2" id="topic_tpt_nmp_vcb">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title4">Changing the user name of your default support email address</h3>
<div class="body">
<div class="p">You can easily create new support email addresses if you want variations of the email
user name. For example:<ul class="ul" id="topic_tpt_nmp_vcb__ul_ifm_q3l_gxb">
<li class="li">help@<em class="ph i">yoursubdomain</em>.zendesk.com</li>
<li class="li">sales@<em class="ph i">yoursubdomain</em>.zendesk.com</li>
<li class="li">billing@<em class="ph i">yoursubdomain</em>.zendesk.com</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="p">By using different email addresses for different situations, you can manage and track
your tickets based on the email address at which the support request was received. For
example, if your end users send email to sales@<em class="ph i">yoursubdomain</em>.zendesk.com, you can
create a trigger to route tickets received at that address directly to the Sales team. You
can also track, via views and reports, tickets received at those different addresses.</p>
<p class="p">See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408842868506#topic_kby_k3w_jw" target="_blank">Adding a Zendesk support addresses</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title5" class="topic nested2" id="topic_j3c_zmp_vcb">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title5">Allowing any user name to be a valid support email address</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">You can also allow any variation of the user name to be a valid support address. For
example, if a customer misspelled your support email address as
<em class="ph i">biling@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com</em> rather than
<em class="ph i">billing@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com</em>, the email can be accepted and a ticket
created. These types of variations are referred to as <em class="ph i">wildcards</em>.</p>
<p class="p">Wildcards handle incoming support address errors (as in the example above). When they are
received, the default support address replaces the incorrect address. Note that wildcard
addresses cannot be used in business rules.</p>
<p class="p">See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5318946039578" target="_blank">Accepting wildcard email addresses for support
requests</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title6" class="topic nested2" id="topic_z5y_fnp_vcb">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title6">Using an external email domain instead of your Zendesk email domain</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">You can also add external email domains as support email addresses. You can forward all
the email that’s coming into your external email account (Gmail, for example) into
Zendesk. You can continue to use an existing email address, and there’s no ‘Zendesk’ in
the email <em class="ph i">Sent To</em> and <em class="ph i">Reply From</em> addresses.</p>
<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_z5y_fnp_vcb__image_bl1_tbx_vcb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/email_domain.png"></p>
<div class="p">There are three steps to using an external email domain.<ol class="ol" id="topic_z5y_fnp_vcb__ol_hqz_jnp_vcb">
<li class="li">First, create a new external email-based support address in Zendesk.</li>
<li class="li">Next, you must set up email forwarding by configuring your email account outside of
Zendesk.</li>
<li class="li">Finally, <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408832543770" target="_blank">add a sender policy framework (SPF) record</a> to
verify that Zendesk can send outgoing email on behalf of your email server.</li>
</ol>
</div>
<p class="p">See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408886828698" target="_blank">Forwarding incoming email from your existing email
address to Zendesk</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title7" class="topic nested2" id="topic_nqx_wnp_vcb">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title7">Agent email forwarding and redirecting</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Setting up <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408886828698" target="_blank">an external support email address</a> for an email
system allows you to automatically forward customer emails to your Zendesk account. It’s
also possible to manually forward or redirect one-off support requests that you may
receive at an email address that has not been added as a support address.</p>
<p class="p">You can allow your agents to forward email to your support address to create a ticket on
behalf of the original sender. To do this, turn on <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408836514202#topic_ym4_2ng_3k" target="_blank">email forwarding for agents</a>. Agents can also <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408836514202#topic_mtw_hbs_2k" target="_blank">set the original sender as requester</a> using a
simple text command in the forwarded email.</p>
<p class="p">Another option is to <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408836514202#topic_q4l_bwr_2k" target="_blank">redirect the email</a> using the email application
where it was received. For example, in Microsoft Exchange an email message can be
redirected using the Actions &gt; Resend this Message command.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title8" class="topic nested1" id="topic_f4r_8hs_v4">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title8">Understanding how incoming emails set the ticket requester</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">The email body is not used in any way to assist in identifying the requester of a ticket.
Zendesk uses information from the email headers to determine the ticket requester. Usually a
requester is set based on the <strong class="ph b">reply-to:</strong> header flag. If the <strong class="ph b">reply-to:</strong> header
is not present, <strong class="ph b">from:</strong> is used in its place. This behavior can't be changed.</p>
<p class="p"><img alt="The reply to: and from: fields in the email header" class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_f4r_8hs_v4__image_sby_vgy_np" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/zug_email_getting_started_part2_headers.png"></p>
<p class="p">Agents can <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408839419034" target="_blank">use the mail API</a>
<em class="ph i">#requester</em> syntax to set the requester on a ticket.</p>
<p class="p">For more information on email threading, see <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408821051034" target="_blank">How can I troubleshoot threading issues?</a></p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title9" class="topic nested1" id="topic_r1f_4gd_v3">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title9">Understanding how incoming emails are matched to tickets</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">A ticket is similar to a threaded email conversation. Keeping the thread together as part
of the same ticket is done using references embedded in both the outgoing and incoming email
notifications. For example, when a customer replies to an email notification, the reply
includes references to the ticket so that the incoming email can be matched to the correct
ticket.</p>
<div class="p">Email notifications include ticket references in the following places:<ul class="ul" id="topic_r1f_4gd_v3__ul_3yv_tpp_vcb">
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Email header</strong>: A reply back from a customer contains ticket references in the
email header using <em class="ph i">In-Reply-To</em> and <em class="ph i">References</em>. You can <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408832876442" target="_blank">view the header and source of any email that you receive</a>.</li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Email body</strong>: The email body includes a hidden reference to the ticket.</li>
<li class="li">
<strong class="ph b">Zendesk support address</strong>: If you're using a Zendesk support address, the
<em class="ph i">Reply To</em> email address includes an encoded reference to the ticket ID. For
example: MondoCam Support &lt;support+id1G7EOR-0Q2J@mondocam.zendesk.com&gt;<p class="p">If you're
using an external domain for email, the encoded ticket ID is not included in the Reply
To email address.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<p class="p">After an email conversation has been started and ticket references have been embedded into
the thread, any replies back and forth are tied to that ticket. If, for some reason, you
wanted to create a new ticket from that email thread, you’d need to copy the content of the
email message and create a new email message. Forwarding the email thread to one of your
other support email addresses won't create a new ticket because the embedded ticket
references will tie it back to the original ticket.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title10" class="topic nested1" id="topic_uv2_331_53">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title10">Spam filtering and suspended tickets</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Spam filtering prevents your account from getting cluttered with bogus tickets. Spam email
is caught and may be held in the suspended tickets queue or completely rejected (meaning
that you’ll never see them) if there's a high probability that the email is spam.</p>
<p class="p">Keep in mind that spam filtering is not perfect and that legitimate support requests may
end up in the suspended tickets queue. When that happens, you can manually retrieve them.
For a detailed explanation of why some incoming email ends up in the suspended tickets
queue, see <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408832769306-What-does-Detected-as-spam-mean-" target="_blank">What does "Detected as spam" mean?</a>.</p>
<p class="p">All of your suspended tickets are listed in a system-generated view that won't appear in
your list of views until the first time a ticket is suspended. Use the Suspended tickets
view to review the emails and accept them as legitimate tickets or reject them as spam. See
<a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408889141146" target="_blank">Understanding and managing suspended tickets and spam</a>.</p>
<p class="p"><img class="image img-screenshot" id="topic_uv2_331_53__image_z53_xbx_vcb" src="https://zen-marketing-documentation.s3.amazonaws.com/docs/en/suspended_tickets_view.png" width="280"></p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title11" class="topic nested1" id="topic_krx_lrp_vcb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title11">Controlling who can use email to create tickets</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Another way to prevent bogus or unwanted tickets is to prevent specific users or groups of
users from creating tickets with email. To do this, add their email domains or individual
email addresses <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408886840986" target="_blank">to your blocklist</a>. This causes their emails to be
suspended or completely rejected. If you want to allow exceptions to your blocklist, you can
add specific email addresses or domains to your allowlist. For example, if specific users
within a blocked email domain are allowed to submit support requests via that email domain,
you can add email addresses for those specific users to the allowlist. </p>
<p class="p">You can also set up a closed Zendesk where <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408883658906" target="_blank">only the users that you add to Zendesk</a> can submit support
requests. When you place access restrictions like this on your account, you’re creating a
<em class="ph i">restricted</em> account. See <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408887573274-Configuring-how-end-users-access-and-sign-in-to-Zendesk-Support" target="_blank">Understanding options for end-user access and
sign-in</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title12" class="topic nested1" id="topic_zgl_1sp_vcb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title12">Managing user accounts created by email requests</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">All the customers you support have a user account in Zendesk. Unless you restrict or close
access to your account, new user accounts are created when you receive a customer’s first
support request via email, excluding suspended or rejected emails. A customer’s user account
tracks of all their support requests, contains their contact information, and all of the
data that’s gathered in the course of interacting with them.</p>
<p class="p">Because most people use more than one email address, you may receive support requests from
an existing customer who has used one of their other email addresses. When this happens, a
new and separate user account is created. It's best to avoid duplicate accounts, so you can
<a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408887695898" target="_blank">merge the newly created account</a> into the customer’s original user
account.</p>
<p class="p">Using more than one email address is supported, as long as the customer’s other email
addresses are also added to their user account. If you give end users access to <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408837910426" target="_blank">edit their profile</a> via the customer portal in your help center,
they can add other email addresses to their user account themselves.</p>
<p class="p">If users have more than one email address associated with their profile, one of the email
addresses is set as their primary email address. The other contact email addresses that are
added to their profile are used to associate support requests from those email addresses
with their user account. All outgoing email notifications to customers use the primary email
address. </p>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title13" class="topic nested2" id="topic_fxd_lsp_vcb">
<h3 class="title topictitle3" id="ariaid-title13">Assigning email requesters to organizations</h3>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">When you receive an email support request from a customer for the first time, which
creates their user account, you can assign that customer to an organization based on their
email domain. For example, you might want to segment your customers based on the company
they work for, which you’ll know by their email domain. This is referred to as <em class="ph i">user
mapping</em> and admins can set this up by editing an organization's settings.</p>
<p class="p">For more information, see <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408882246298#topic_nxl_vdt_bc" target="_blank">Automatically adding users to organizations based on
their email domain</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title14" class="topic nested1" id="topic_hgh_5sp_vcb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title14">Disabling rich content in incoming email notifications</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">By default, Zendesk uses the rich content formatting contained in incoming HTML-based email
messages (bold, italic, underline, tables, etc.). The rich content is retained and displayed
in tickets. If you prefer to use the plain text version of email messages, you can <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408828563866" target="_blank">disable rich content in incoming emails</a>.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title15" class="topic nested1" id="topic_wcp_ysp_vcb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title15">Understanding how a customer’s language is detected</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">There are a number of ways to identify a customer’s language and reply to them in their
preferred language. User profiles include a <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408835022490#topic_pvf_1yt_p1b" target="_blank">language setting</a> that users and agents can specify.
Additionally, Zendesk attempts to <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408882016666" target="_blank">detect a user's language</a> from incoming email support requests from
new customers.</p>
</div>
</div>
<div aria-labelledby="ariaid-title16" class="topic nested1" id="topic_mtr_htp_vcb">
<h2 class="title topictitle2" id="ariaid-title16">Including other people as a CC or follower</h2>
<div class="body">
<p class="p">Support conversations aren’t always limited to the customer who needs support and the
assigned agent to provide that support. You can use the <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/5179445630234" target="_blank">CCs and followers feature</a> to include other people in the
conversation and alert them to responses. </p>
<p class="p">Admins can <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408843795482" target="_blank">allow agents and signed-in customers to add CCs to
tickets</a>, but enabling CCs can add complexity because of the increased number of
recipients. When other agents are added as CCs, they receive email notifications for all
ticket updates, including both public and private comments added to the tickets. Customers
that are CC’d only receive email notifications for public comments and ticket updates.</p>
<p class="p">Followers get email notifications when comments are added to tickets they are following.
There’s no way to disable email notifications to followers (other than to stop using
followers), but you can customize the text in email notifications to followers using the
<a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408843866394#topic_vb5_sqr_jhb" target="_blank">followers email template</a>.</p>
<p class="p">When <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4408884153242" target="_blank">rich text formatting</a> is enabled, you can also add other people to
a ticket by <a class="xref" href="https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/4928739064986" target="_blank">using an @mention</a> within the body of a ticket
comment. </p>
</div>
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line-height: 1.5x;
padding-top: 2px;
margin-bottom: 0.5rem;
font-weight: 600;
color: #585858;
}
.nav-underline {
--bs-nav-underline-gap: 2px;
}
.what-plan-p {
line-height: 3rem;
}
img {
vertical-align: baseline;
}
.article-body .nav {
list-style-type: none;
padding-left: 0px;
margin-top: 0px;
margin-left: 0px;
}
.article-body .nav-link {
text-decoration: none;
}
`;
document.head.appendChild(style);
</script>
</body>