If your customers occasionally send support requests to your email address instead of your support address, you can pass the email to the support address. By passing the email, a ticket is created with the original sender set as the requester. It also creates a new account if the user isn't registered.
You have two options for passing the email:
Redirecting email is not the same as forwarding it. Redirecting preserves the header information so that the email appears to be from the original sender, not from you. A ticket is created with the original sender set as the requester.
If you forward the email, the sender becomes you, not the original sender. Normally, the process creates a ticket listing you as the requester. However, two options are available to set the correct requester on the ticket.
Use this article if you want to handle the occasional email yourself. If you want to redirect all emails sent to an email address (not just the occasional one), see Using an external email domain in the Administrator Guide.
Forwarding an email
If you forward the email, the sender becomes you, not the original sender. Normally, the process creates a ticket listing you as the requester. However, you can use one of the following solutions to set the correct requester on the ticket:
- Enabling the forwarding option for agents in Zendesk Support
- Specifying the requester in the forwarded email
- Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010
Enabling the forwarding option for agents in Zendesk Support
Your administrator can enable an option that lets you forward an email in your inbox to your support address to create a ticket on behalf of the original sender.
Forwarding works for ticket creation, not ticket updates. Once a ticket has been created, users should reply directly from their email notifications.
Forwarding is only configured to look at the From field in the forwarded message. When an agent forwards an email and forwarding is enabled in the account, the forwarded email will not contain the original list of CCs (copied users) that may have been included on the ticket notifications.
When a non-restricted agent creates a ticket using agent forwarding, the ticket is unassigned. When a restricted agent creates a ticket using agent forwarding, the ticket will initially be assigned to their default group.
To enable the forwarding option
- Log in as an administrator.
- Click the Admin icon (
) in the sidebar, then select Agents from the Settings category.
- Select the Enable email forwarding option from the Email Forwarding category.
- Click Save.
Agents can add public comments to the ticket by replying to the email. To add private comments, agents can type the comment above the Forwarded message line.
Specifying the requester in the forwarded email
This solution works for all email clients. It involves inserting a simple instruction in the email body that specifies the requester. When creating the ticket, Zendesk Support reads the instruction and sets the requester you specified.
The solution works only if you're an agent and your email address is registered in your account. The command is ignored if the email is forwarded by an end-user. For more information, see Updating ticket properties from your inbox in the Administrator Guide.
- Select the email in your inbox and click Forward.
- Enter the following instruction at the top of the email body:
#requester {requester_email}
where
{requester_email}
is the requester's email address. Example:#requester gerry5@yahoo.com
Tip: You can copy the requester's address from the Forwarded Message section in the body.
- Clean up the email. For example, remove the FWD prefix in the subject line and the Forwarded Message header in the body.
The requester instruction will be stripped from the ticket automatically.
- Enter your support address in the To field and click Send.
Configuring Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010
The Microsoft Exchange email server doesn't currently allow users to redirect individual messages. However, you can use the following workaround. It works for any normal user and doesn't require granting special permissions on the Exchange server.
- Select the message in your inbox and click Forward.
- Enter your support address in the To field.
- Click Options tab and click the Direct Replies To button.
- In the Properties window, change the value in the "Have replies sent to" field to the name of the user submitting the request.
Tip: Click Select Names to search your Address Book.
- Close the window and click Send.
Tip: If you use this command frequently, select File > Options > Quick Access Toolbar, and add the Direct Replies To button to your toolbar.
Redirecting an email
Some email clients can redirect an email as if you never opened it, preserving the header information so that the email appears to be from the original sender, not you.
Note: If your email account is on a Microsoft Exchange server, redirecting a message is not possible currently in any email client. However, you can still forward an email and set the correct requester on the ticket. See Forwarding an email for details.
The following are some email clients that support redirection:
Gmail does not currently support redirecting indvidual emails. You can forward an email instead. See Forwarding an email.
If you know how redirect works in other clients, please share the information in a comment at the end of this article.
Microsoft Outlook 2007 and 2010
- Double-click the email in your inbox to open it in a new window.
- Select Actions > Resend This Message.
A warning appears about you not being the original sender of the message.
- Click Yes.
A message window appears.
- Enter your support address in the To field and click Send.
Mail (Mac OS)
- Control-click the email in your inbox and select Redirect.
- Enter your support address in the To field and click Send.
Tip: If you use this command frequently, select View > Customize Toolbar, and add the Redirect button to your toolbar.
Mozilla Thunderbird
- Install and use the mailredirect plugin at http://mailredirect.mozdev.org/installation.html.
Only Thunderbird 3 or later is supported.
- Select the message you want to redirect and choose Redirect from the Tools menu.
- Enter your support address in the To field and click Send.
Eudora
- Select the message in your inbox and choose Redirect from the Message menu.
- Enter your support address in the To field and click Send.
Evolution
- Select the message in the inbox and choose Forward > Redirect from the Actions menu.
- Enter your support address in the To field and click Send.
69 Comments
Hey Rick,
Unfortunately that is not an available function of the Mail API at this time. So there would be no way pass that on at this time.
You can see all of the available commands here: Mail API.
If you'd like to see that available, I'd recommend making a request in our product feedback forums!
Does this work with an office that is connected through Microsoft 365 (Outlook)?
Hi Kevin,
We use 365 here and it works from the desktop, online and in the iphone app - just be sure that the #requester and #assignee are all lower-case, also do not "copy" and paste the requester email address from the forward (type it in) - these things caused issues for us.
Cheers,
Christina
thanks for jumping in, Christina!
Also, welcome to the community, Kevin!
Hello
If you use Zoho mail, it works redirecting all your email like if it was sent directly you redirecting mail, so only you have to do is go to email panel then Email Forwarding Pop/IMAP and there you have to colocate the email you want be redirect through, I know the option says forwarding but don't worry it will redirect.
Regards
Hello!
We are testing Zendesk for our company and faced one problem: the external e-mails are not verified. We use Thunderbird as the main Email tool and we installed Mailredirect. However, it didn't help. So, we can't connect those external emails to Zendesk, hence, we don't the messages in one programm (Zendesk). Only FB page was successfully connected. Would you please explain what we can do?
Best regards, Maria
Hi Maria,
I'm going to create a ticket for you and join you in there so we can troubleshoot this one in a bit more depth together. See you in the ticket. :)
Best,
Amie
Hi Amie,
I haven't got any ticket yet. Could you please send once again?
Best regards,
Maria
---
This comment was edited on 11/15/17. Community Managers removed personal email address from the comment.
Hi Maria,
Thanks for letting me know. I sent the original ticket to that same address. Ticket id is #3077669. I've just sent another update on the ticket. Hopefully you receive it now. :)
Best,
Amie
Has anyone figured out a way for an agent to forward an internal email in a 365/Outlook environment and have it assign to the original sender?
For internal messages in this environment Outlook resolves an internal user's email address so it does not include it in the "From" on a forward so Zendesk cannot grab the original requester and just creates the ticket in the agent's name.
Rick, I was able to overcome this in an Exchange / Outlook environment by creating a VB macro in Outlook that strips the sender address from the original email, then inserts it as a #requester tag in the subsequent email. I did this by cobbling together two different scripts i found online (so i take no credit for the solution!) happy to share the macro if you'd like.
We frequently pass emails to our support address to create tickets from Outlook 2016, and the feature works well, creating the original sender of the email as the ticket requester. The issue that I have is that if there are other people CC-ed on the original email to the agent, and the agent forwards the ticket to the support email address, those CCs are stripped out when the ticket is created. I have to manually copy the email addresses and add them to the ticket after the ticket is created. We also have tried the Zendesk extension for Outlook, but unfortunately there is also no CC field or ability to "pass" CCs on the email directly to the newly created ticket. Is there a way around this that I'm unaware of?
Hi Christopher!
I'm not sure whether this is expected behavior or not, so I'm going to see if I can find someone to verify. Stand by!
Hi Christopher,
As far as I'm aware the CC's should be coming in on the ticket when it's forwarded through. Sounds a bit odd that they are being stripped out for you. I'm going to create you a new ticket on this and we can investigate further with you from there. See you in the ticket. :)
Seeing as Gmail doesn't support the redirection of mail we created a simple script that takes care of forwarding the end-user mail to our ZD support mail. For some reason I couldn't make it work just with that so we had to go through ZD's API (The requester wasn't assigning correctly).
The whole point of this process was to automate it while we get the contact form going and let go of the mail. It didn't take long to implement this.
Hi there,
I was wondering is it possible to have the "Submit a Request form" send the submissions to an external email address rather than creating a ticket within Zendesk? Our organisation is using Zendesk for the Guide features but still manages support requests via another CRM.
Thanks.
Hi Roo,
Thanks for reaching out. At present it's not possible to redirect submissions from the Zendesk "submit a request" form to a different ticketing platform. Our ticket form is designed to forward the submissions into Zendesk and a ticket created from there.
Thanks for the response Amie! Is there the ability to add in a different contact form via the HTML / CSS editor or anything along those lines in order to achieve what i want to do?
Hey Roo!
If you're on Guide Professional or higher you have access to the HTML, CSS, and JS for your Help Center, so you can customize it any way you like including adding an HTML form and hiding the link to the native web form. You'd also probably want to hide the My Activities section, since your user's tickets wouldn't show up there. We're not able to write the custom code for you, but there are numerous Tips in our Tips & Tricks topic that can help you get started!
We tried to use the "Resending"/"Redirecting" approach in our Exchange setup.
Turns out we just aren't allowed to resend messages, as this is considered spoofing.
We have struggled with this as well, ultimeately got it working, but our agents found that the Zendesk Outlook extension was a good fit for us. It has probably been mentioned many times before, but its worth a re-mention for new users looking at this.
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/213691807-Setting-up-Zendesk-for-Microsoft-Outlook-Integration-
Thanks for sharing your experience, Holger!
I have tried this and it does not work
Hi Milan, We would need to take a closer look at your example and to do so we might need to inspect some personal or account data that we would not want to have posted here. Could you please open a ticket with us at support@zendesk.com, so that we could look at the particulars of the example. Thanks.
I'm having difficulty with the CCs porting in as well. Any update as to why the CCs might not be preserved in an Outlook forward?
Hey Luke,
I'm going to create a ticket on your behalf and passed over to our Support team to investigate further. We will need to get a couple of email examples from you to determine what could be causing this issue. You'll receive a follow-up email shortly after your ticket is created :)
Cheers!
The Forwarding does not seem to work.
Am I missing something?
I hope for the day we can simply forward an email into Zendesk like GSuite users. Is there a feature request or roadmap for this functionality?
Hey Cedric,
You should be able to forward an email to your listed support address under Admin>Channels>Email which would then create a ticket. Are you running into any issues on your end when you attempt to forward an email?
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