Understanding how mail loops are prevented between Zendesk accounts

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Many Zendesk accounts utilize triggers to automatically notify users that their email has been received and a ticket has been created. However, when the user is another Zendesk account, these triggers can result in an infinite mail loop. In such cases, one Zendesk account automatically creates a ticket and sends a message to the other account, which then does the same in return, creating a continuous cycle.

To address this issue, Zendesk has implemented several methods to prevent mail loops between accounts.

This article contains the following sections:

How Zendesk suppresses automatic email notifications

About email notifications and ticket sharing agreements

Related articles:

About mail loops and Zendesk email

Email resources

How Zendesk suppresses automatic email notifications

Zendesk Support differentiates between automatic email notifications and all other email notifications:

Automatic email notifications are emails generated by Zendesk Support without any action from an agent. When a ticket is automatically created from an incoming email, an automatic message is sent.

All other email notifications include emails generated by Zendesk Support based on an agent's action. For example, when an agent adds a comment to a ticket, an email notification is sent.

When your instance of Zendesk Support receives an email from an end-user that it identifies as another Zendesk account, it performs the following steps:

Creates a ticket from that email or threads the reply back into their original ticket, using the sending email address of the requester.

Suppresses triggers for automatic email notifications.

Email notification triggers are left intact, so when an agent adds a comment to a ticket, an email notification is still sent to the Zendesk account that submitted the original email. The following flag is added to the comment:

About email notifications and ticket sharing agreements

When you send email to another Zendesk account, automatic email notifications are suppressed, but email notifications generated by an agent action are sent. This can cause problems if you have a ticket sharing agreement with the other Zendesk account. In that case, it's possible to create an endless loop of notifications if the email address for the user in the CC or Requester field is the support address of a Zendesk account you have a sharing agreement with.

To prevent endless loops, Zendesk Support automatically maintains a list of Zendesk partner addresses—that is, a list of all the support addresses for each Zendesk account you have a sharing agreement with.

When a user is created in Zendesk Support, the email address is checked against the list of partner addresses. If the address is on the list, then all email notifications, including those generated by agent action, will be suppressed to that user. On a ticket, you'll see a flag when a user on your list of Zendesk partner addresses is in the CC or Requester field. The warning flag lets you know that email will not be sent to that user.

Likewise, email sent to Zendesk Support from any email address on your partner addresses list will be rejected by Zendesk Support because there is already a sharing agreement in place. If you need to, you can create a ticket with this user as requester and share the ticket back to the Zendesk account you already have a sharing agreement with.

If you have questions or need assistance with Zendesk email, contact Zendesk Customer Support.