To receive support requests at an external email address (instead of your Zendesk Support email address), you need to forward email received at your external email address to an email address in your Zendesk account.
You configure email forwarding in your own email account, not in Zendesk Support. Exactly how this is done depends on the email provider you're using. A number of email providers allow you to create email forwarding rules so that you can select the incoming mail that should be forwarded to your Zendesk account.
After you set up forwarding, make sure you've added your external email address as a Zendesk Support address (see Adding support addresses for users to submit tickets). When you add your support address, your email will be verified and you'll know whether you've set up email forwarding properly.
Optionally, you can edit or create an SPF record to verify that Zendesk Support can send email on behalf of your email server (see Setting up SPF for Zendesk to send email on behalf of your email domain). You can also digitally sign the outbound email from Zendesk. See Digitally signing your email with DKIM or DMARC.
Follow the steps for your email provider to set up forwarding.
- Microsoft Exchange and Outlook
- Google Gmail
- Google G Suite
- Yahoo Mail
- Fastmail
- Lotus Notes/Lotus Domino
20 Comments
Hi -
We use Google Apps and have our standard support Gmail account set up to sync to Zendesk. That all works like a breeze.
However, we are looking to add a Gmail email group that is currently used by our training department to Zendesk to help streamline the conversation process. We've configured the forwarding settings following the directions linked to in this article but the forwarding checks continue to fail on the Zendesk side. Is this something Zendesk can help solve or is this something I would need to follow up with Google about?
Thanks!
Hey, Phil -
We don't currently have strong support for Google Groups. We don't really recommend using a google group as a support address, since it adds lots of confusion to who has received what emails, and opens up the possibility of mail loops that we can't always prevent. For example, what happens if someone else in the group is a CC on the ticket?
I'm not sure why the forwarding detection isn't working (it should in theory). Have you reached out to our support team?
Thanks Max. I haven't contacted support yet, as I thought I would start here for answers and see what the community had to share.
Those are good points about the Google Group and we'll definitely take that into consideration. The email loop is a large part of the reason we wanted to bring it into Zendesk to provide some level of tracking capability.
Thanks for the response.
Hi Phil,
Currently I'm using Google Group support e-mail to receive all incoming requests. From our side that's done in order we don't lose any e-mail sent from customer, and by the way, our developers are monitoring requests in the e-mails.
Configuring Google Group for Zendesk works similar to the regular gmail forwarding, just subscribe support@yourdomain.zendesk.com to the group you use (supposedly support@yourdomain.com) and configure SPF for it (still I'd recommend setting up DKIM as well).
After that everything would work without any problems (except you'll get duplicated notifications from Zendesk that a new ticket appears.
Hi there,
I have perhaps a unique situation, where all I want is for the initial email that is sent when a user is created to be sent from a different email address. I specifically do not want that address to forward to Zendesk, but i would like all outgoing Zendesk emails to use that address. Is this possible?
Hey, David -
That does seem unique to me. What's the reason behind this? If we send an email and populate the From and Reply-to headers with your email address, but you don't forward those emails to us, how do the replies keep the ticket conversation going?
The idea came after I added coworkers as end users, and they received the email to create a password and log in. Our IT man thought it was a virus and told everyone not to open it.
The idea was to have the welcome mail come from a familiar email address to avoid this situation for future users. And since this is an email that no one needs to respond to, it shouldn't make a difference.
Hey, David -
It should come from one of your own addresses if you set up a default support address. Other than that, no, we won't send any email from an address that you haven't forwarded to us. Something to think about for sure, but right now it hasn't come up from anywhere else.
Hi, would the "Custom Domain for DKIM" option help us here?
I'll emphasize again that we are not interested in having tickets created when emails come to the external address, but we would like it to be the "From" address when we send out messages from Zendesk.
Hi, David -
No, that wouldn't do anything to allow us to send on your behalf. At the moment the only way we're set up to send email "from" your address is if you set up forwarding.
cool this accont its we have ah pro
Hi Rassel!
I'm afraid I don't understand what you're asking...could you give us more information?
I'm trying to forward emails from one of my agent's email addresses into zendesk. I've set up email forwarding in Gmail but when I try to add the email address in zendesk I get an error which says
'This email address is already being used by XXX If you want to set up forwarding you'll need to delete or update this user'.
What do you mean by update? Is it not possible to have an Agent's email address linked to Zendesk?
Thanks
Hi Nadia!
If an email address is associated with a user profile, it cannot be added as a Support Address is your Zendesk. That's why you're getting an error.
Can you share some details about your use case? Is there a reason that your agent can't manually forward those emails to your primary support address?
Hi
I did anything follow this article to change the support e-mail (support@XXX.zendesk.com) to support@mycompany.com.
However, when user received email from zendesk support, the mail support@doman.zendesk.com is still displayed. Only the name of email change from domain to mycompany and that's all.
Please help me
Many thanks.
Hi Autumn!
It sounds like you haven't added your support address as one yet -- For the email to be used, it needs to be explicitly added as a support address under Admin >> Channels >> Email, using the "Add Address" option on the right hand side.
Here are two articles which speak to it as well:
I'll follow up in a ticket shortly to ensure everything is going alright!
The Recipient Address Map appears to be Google's preferred method: https://support.google.com/a/answer/4524505?hl=en
This is the method they link to from the individual email routing tab in the Google Apps Admin.
Hi Kat!
Are you pointing this out as something that should be updated in our documentation? I just want to make sure I understand. :)
Guys,
I'm having hard time adding our existing support email. Here's the error message I'm getting:
Hey Daniel!
Sorry to hear you're running into some issues with your email forwarding. This generally happens when the forwarding configuration on the external email side is not setup properly, but it's a bit tough to determine the cause without more context. If you're sure everything is setup properly externally but this is still not working, I would recommend sending in a ticket to support@zendesk.com along with your account subdomain. Our advocates can work with you more directly than here on the forums and find out where the issue is.
Thanks!
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