Google Apps for Business - Mail redirection to Zendesk Support - Best Practices

Setting up redirection

This guide is to help you in setting up email redirection for your support addresses from Google Apps to Zendesk Support.

1. Go to admin.google.com and login using an account with administrative privileges for your business.
   
2. Go to Apps > Google Apps > Gmail
   
   
   
   
3. Select Default routing and click on Add setting to create a new rule.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Select Single recipient and enter the email address you want to use as a support address in Zendesk Support (for example, [e-mail] ).
   
5. For Envelope recipient choose Change envelope recipient and replace the recipient value with your Zendesk Support default support address (for example [e-mail] ).
6. At the very bottom of this windows, select Perform this action on non-recognized and recognized addresses and click on Save.
   
   
   OPTIONAL - Archive and backup all emails that are received at the support address
   
   
   
7. All done, the rule is created!
   
   

Note: Repeat these steps for all the different email addresses you would like to add.

Now, for the part we need to set up in Zendesk Support:

1. Login with an Administrator account.
2. Go to Settings by clicking on the gear icon in the lower left part of the screen.
3. Select Channels > Email. Add the desired email address in the Support Addresses section. Click Add Address, then Connect other.
4. The process for verification will now start and should be completed shortly.
   
   
   An email will be sent from Zendesk Support to the support address you just added. If that arrives back to your Zendesk Support instance, forwarding is verified and you are good to go!

Improving deliverability

There are two big steps you can take in order to greatly reduce chances of emails being marked as spam. By using Zendesk Support, we are sending emails from our servers on behalf of your domain(s). This can cause receiving mail servers to flag incoming email as spam, if our mail servers have not been set as a trusted source for mail on your behalf.

1. SPF (Sender Policy Framework)

Zendesk Support email is sent by our email servers on behalf of your domain(s). So, for your all used domains, we are in essence spoofing the addresses under those domains. By adding an SPF record to your domain you can set all Zendesk mail servers as a trusted source of email originating from your domain.

A very basic record which includes nothing but the value required looks like " v=spf1 include:mail.zendesk.com ~all"

In your domains DNS settings it will look something like this:

Please note, the last part of the record (on mail originating from servers that have no definition in the record) is up to you to decide. Valid options are ~all (soft fail), -all (hard fail) and ?all (Neutral) - You can set this up as you prefer; it does not impact email deliverability as long as the mail.zendesk.com entry is included. This part of the record specifies how to handle mail from servers that are not defined in the record.

Today almost all email providers check for SPF records to determine if mail originated from a designated sender that has been specified for the domain.

The full documentation on setting up an SPF record for your domain can be found here: https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203683886.

If this has been set up correctly receiving mail servers will identify the Zendesk email servers as a permitted sender, and you should be able to see this in the source of your emails:

2. DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) -

The other big thing to do is set up DKIM for your domain. To improve deliverability, you can enable DKIM in Zendesk Support.
This can be enabled under the Email channel and involves the creation of two CNAME records for your domains prior to enabling the setting in Zendesk Support.

The full documentation on how to set up DKIM for your domain to use it with Zendesk Support can be found here:
https://support.zendesk.com/entries/24513948 .

In your domains DNS settings it will look something like this:

When you add authentication information to your domain, an added benefit is that many ISPs use authentication to track sending reputation. With authentication handled by your domain, reputation with the receiving ISPs is influenced by your domain and the emails sent on behalf of your domain.
This means you maintain control over the emails that affect deliverability for your domain. A positive reputation for your domain builds trust and improves deliverability, affecting whether your emails are caught by spam filters and how quickly the receiving servers will accept mail from your domain.

If you require any assistance from us in setting this up, Contact Zendesk Customer Support and we'll do the best we can to help you out.