Understanding and managing suspended tickets and spam

Fastpath: Views > Suspended tickets

Email sent to Zendesk Support can be suspended or rejected. Suspended email is not necessarily spam. This article explains the other reasons tickets can be suspended and what to do about them.

For information, see the support tip What does "Detected as spam" mean?

This article discusses the following topics:

• What are suspended tickets?
• What causes emails to be suspended?
• Using the blacklist and whitelist to refine the suspended tickets view

Related articles:

• Guidelines for reviewing suspended tickets
• Setting up suspended ticket notifications
• Causes of suspended tickets
• Authenticating incoming email using DMARC

What are suspended tickets?

When an end-user submits a support request by email, in most cases the email becomes a new ticket or adds a comment to an existing ticket. In certain cases though, the email is suspended. Suspending an email means putting it aside for further review. It's not necessarily spam. It's just not a ticket in Zendesk Support yet. It remains in limbo until somebody reviews it and decides whether to accept or reject it. If nobody reviews it, the email is deleted after 14 days.

Suspended emails are displayed in a system-generated view.

To view suspended emails

• Click the Views () icon in the sidebar and then click the Suspended Tickets view.

An email can be suspended for several reasons, some for intentional policy reasons. A common reason is that the email is from an unregistered user when you require users to register. Example:

For more information, see What causes tickets to be suspended? below.

We recommend implementing a process for reviewing suspended emails. See Guidelines for reviewing suspended tickets.

Instead of being suspended, an email can be rejected outright. A rejected email is not kept for further review and it can't be recovered. Email is rejected for the following two reasons:

• The email is spam. If the email is rated as having a 99% or better chance of being spam, it's rejected. If the rating is less than a 99%, the email is suspended to give you a chance to confirm that it's really spam.
• You blacklisted the email address or domain. See Using the whitelist and blacklist to control access to Zendesk Support.

What causes emails to be suspended?

Emails are suspended for a number of reasons, including:

• The sender is not allowed to create or update a ticket
• The sender is not a person
• The email failed DMARC authentication

See Causes of suspended tickets for more detailed information.

The sender is not allowed to create or update tickets

An email can be suspended if you require users to register before submitting their first ticket, or if your instance of Zendesk Support is closed or restricted that limits who can submit tickets.

• Open requires users to register, anybody can submit tickets as long as they register first. After submitting a first ticket, the ticket is suspended and a welcome email is sent to the new user requiring them to register before the ticket can be submitted. After the user verifies their email address and creates a password, the ticket is unsuspended.
• Closed permits designated users can create or update tickets. An administrator designates who can submit tickets. If an unknown person tries to submit a ticket, the email is suspended.
• Restricted permits only users with email addresses in certain domains can register and submit tickets. Emails in other domains are either suspended or completely rejected, depending on your setup.

A sender can also be prevented from updating a ticket if the email token identifying the ticket is stripped from the reply email.

The sender is not a person

Emails are suspended if Zendesk Support detects they're not from real users. Examples:

• Suspected spam
• Automated response emails, including out of office or vacation auto-generated response emails
• Emails from system users such as mail-daemon@
• Emails with a 'no-reply' address

The email attachments failed DMARC authentication

Emails are suspended if they do not pass Zendesk's DMARC authentication policies.

For more information, see Authenticating incoming email using DMARC.

Using the blacklist and whitelist to refine the suspended tickets view

If you find that your suspended tickets view includes too many spam emails (which should be rejected instead), or too many valid emails (which should be accepted), you can use the blacklist and whitelist features to help refine what is routed into the view.

• The blacklist can help you identify and isolate known spam addresses.
• The whitelist can help you route valid emails to your inbox.

Reducing spam in the suspended tickets view

Zendesk uses spam detection software to rate incoming email. If the email is rated as having a 99% or greater chance of being spam, it's rejected and you never see it. If it's rated as having less than a 99% chance of being spam, the email is added to your suspended tickets to give you a chance to confirm that it's really spam.

If you find that you're receiving more spam emails than you'd like in your suspended tickets queue, you can use the blacklist to reject specific email addresses and domains. See Using the whitelist and blacklist to control access to Zendesk Support.

Note: The option to blacklist email is not available when administrators designate who can submit tickets.

Reducing valid emails in the suspended tickets view

The whitelist is used in conjunction with the blacklist to restrict access to your Zendesk. Emails submitted by end-users on the blacklist are suspended or rejected. The whitelist specifies who is exempt from the blacklist rules, as well as bypassing some standard causes for email suspension.

For example:

• Messages sent into Zendesk from [e-mail] would be suspended, but will create tickets normally if the source address is present in the whitelist.
• Email from a whitelisted user can still be suspended because the user hasn't registered yet (cause of suspension: "User must sign up to submit email, user notified").

For more information, see Using the whitelist and blacklist to control access to Zendesk Support.