Adding and removing the delimiter from email notifications

Fastpath: Admin () > Channels > Email

The delimiter is a line of text used to inform the email recipient that any text entered into a reply must be above a certain line in the email. You can choose to include or exclude the delimiter from email notifications, depending on the email experience you want to give your end users.

Some Support customers remove the delimiter from email notifications in order to improve the email experience.

This article contains the following topics:

• Adding the delimiter to email notifications
• Removing the delimiter from email notifications

Related articles:

• Customizing your templates for email notifications
• Adding or removing ticket links in emails
• Showing user profile photos in HTML emails

Adding the delimiter to email notifications

When the recipient's reply is received in Support, the delimiter is used to separate old content from new. The new content is added to the ticket as a comment. If the delimiter is enabled, you can customize the delimiter's text and font size, color, and type.

Enabling the delimiter

For accounts created before July 3, 2020, the delimiter is enabled by default. For accounts created after July 3, 2020, the delimiter is disabled by default.

To enable the delimiter

1. Click the admin icon (), and then navigate to Channels > Email.
2. Scroll down to the Mail delimiter section and select the Enable check box.
3. Click Save.

Editing the delimiter text

You can edit the delimiter text to better reflect your organization. Using placeholders, you can also support multiple languages in the delimiter.

To edit the delimiter text

1. Go to Admin > Channels > Email.
2. In the Mail delimiter section, enter a personalized delimiter that's between 20 to 65 characters long.
3. Click Save.

Your delimiter can also support multiple languages if you use the {{txt.email.delimiter}} placeholder. The text in the delimiter is drawn from the translations provided for the languages supported in Zendesk. The language shown in the email message is based on each user's language preference. This is a convenient way to support different languages in your email template. However, it also means that you have no control over the words in the translated versions of the delimiter.

Note: If your users don't have a language preference selected, as is the case with unverified users in a Zendesk set up for email-only support (see Setting up to provide email-only support), the delimiter is displayed in your primary (default) language.

Editing the delimiter font size, color, and type

You can edit your delimiter font size, color, and type in your Email template HTML. Your edits should be on the same line as the placeholder. Do not make these changes on any other line as it will affect the rest of your text.

For more information on customizing text see, Jordan Wheelock's support tip Changing your email template content fonts and Ben Lucier's community tip, A better email template for Zendesk.

Removing the delimiter from email notifications

Some Support customers remove the delimiter because it looks automated or machine-generated. Without it, emails may look cleaner and feel more personal.

Improving the email experience by disabling the delimiter

When the delimiter is disabled, all new outgoing email notifications will no longer include the delimiter. This is true for tickets that were created before disabling the delimiter. It doesn’t change the email experience for your end users in any other way.

For example, this email notification includes the delimiter. It's the first line of text used to inform the email recipient that any text entered into the reply must be above a certain line in the email.

When the delimiter is disabled, the delimiter text is not added to email notifications. For example:

To disable the delimiter

1. Click the admin icon (), and then navigate to Channels > Email.
2. Scroll down to the Mail delimiter section and clear the Enable check box.
3. Click Save.
4. Remove the delimiter code from the default email template (as described below).

To remove delimiter placeholder text from the default email template

If the delimiter is disabled, but you don’t complete the following steps, the delimiter text will be removed from email notifications, but any CSS styling applied to the delimiter placeholder's container may still render.

1. Click the admin icon (), and then navigate to Channels > Email.
2. Go the Email templates section and do the following:
   1. Remove this code:

      <div style="color: #b5b5b5;">{{delimiter}}</div>

   2. If you customized the template, you need to remove {{delimiter}} and any surrounding CSS.
3. Scroll down and click Save.

Comment appearance when the delimiter is disabled

Disabling the delimiter changes the appearance of comments from the ticket interface. This section explains what agents can expect to see when they are looking at comments from the ticket interface.

Quoted email replies

When viewing comments from the ticket interface, there is an ellipsis (…) below the comments that were created from email. You can click the ellipsis to expand the quoted email reply.

Inline replies

Your end users may sometimes reply to emails by adding inline text to the body of the message. For example, they may say “Please see my comment below” and then add inline text to the body of the previous message. If they do this, here’s what the inline reply may look like:

• If the reply is partially inline, there will be an ellipsis (...) at the end of the comment. You can click the ellipsis to expand the reply, and view the portion of the message that includes the inline text that was added by the end user.

  

• If the reply is completely inline, the entire email appears in the comment.

  

Long emails and emails with tables

When the delimiter is enabled, if the email was too long (64 KB of text or ), there is a Show more icon which launches the original email in a separate browser window. When the delimiter is disabled, there will be an ellipses (...) instead, so that you can expand the email instead.