You can receive support requests at an Outlook email account, and forward it to your Zendesk email address.
This works with email addresses using both Outlook.com and Outlook hooked into an Exchange server.
If you're using another email client, see Forwarding your incoming support email to Zendesk.
This article contains the following topics:
Forwarding email from Outlook.com
Zendesk Support cannot guarantee performance if Outlook.com is not functioning correctly.
To set up forwarding from your Outlook.com mailbox, follow the instructions in Turn on or off automatic forwarding in Outlook.com on Microsoft's website.
Next Steps
You also need to add your external email address as a support address in Zendesk. 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 can send email on behalf of your email server. See Setting up SPF for Zendesk to send email on behalf of your email domain.
Forwarding email from Microsoft Exchange
To forward email to Zendesk using Outlook hooked in to an Exchange server, you can set up a redirect rule. To do so, follow the instructions in Microsoft Outlook: Automatically forward my messages to another e-mail account.
- Create a contact in Active Directory called Zendesk Support with the email address support@yourdomain.zendesk.com.
- Enable forwarding on support@yourcompany.com in the user properties in Active Directory.
For detailed instructions, refer to How to configure a mailbox to forward mail to a mail-enabled contact.
19 Comments
For those who encounter issues when adding a forwarding from an external email address within Microsoft Exchange, here's a helpful article to view: https://support.microsoft.com/de-de/help/2773786/550-550-5.1.1-or-550-5.7.1-ndr-message-when-an-external-user-sends-an-email-message-to-a-universal-distribution-group. [NOTE: It's possible that you may need to uncheck the box in the Exchange Server properties for the account which required senders to be authenticate]
Hi Avi,
I'm try to forwarding from our Microsoft Exchange to Zendesk email by following the above article. The ticket was created when we received email in our internal email.
But the problem is when we reply from Zendesk Support, the sender email address is from Zendesk email address not from our internal email address. Is there something that I need to check ?
thanks,
Hi Eldien!
Do you meant that it's coming from support@yourcompany.zendesk.com, instead of support@yourcompany.com?
If that's the case, go to your Admin settings > Channels > Email and make sure that the correct email is set as the default. The default email address there will be the one that shows as the "from" address in your ticket responses. You can find more info on that here.
Hi @Jessie, noted. Thanks
Hi there Avi / Community Team/Support,
The link provided at the end of the article (https://support.zendesk.com/entries/22416901-forwarding-email-with-hosted-exchange-using-outlook-macro) links to a page with:
oops
You're not authorized to access this page
Take me back to the home page
I am logged in when I try to access this page so not sure why the error comes up.
Hey Ashley -
Apologies, that article has been archived as it's no longer current. We'll be sure to change the link in the article.
Thanks for the update Nicole.
We auto-forward emails from our outlook accounts into Zendesk. Is there a way to maintain the same formatting that we see in Outlook when the email comes into Zendesk? We have some retail customers who send in emails with columns and boxes, however when the email goes into Zendesk, the formatting is lost and all the information is jumbled.
Hi Emily,
Thanks for touching base with us on this. There's a setting within the Email settings of a Zendesk which allows for rich content such as tables etc to come through correctly formatted on the ticket. Are you able to please check to see if this setting it enabled in your account? If it's not, you'll need to enable it so this works for you as expected from there.
To enable rich content tickets
After this is enabled, send through a new test ticket from there with a table on it to check that it appears correctly on a ticket for you from there. This should do the trick for you from here with this. :)
Best.
Amie
Amie Brennan | Chief Unicorn Wrangler | Senior Customer Advocate - Tier 1 | support@zendesk.com
The only downside to this option is if a Zendesk agent email is also included in the original To recipient, that agent will not be able to receive emails created using New Ticket triggers in Zendesk.
Any chance this could be an option in the future? The ability for an agent included in the original To email header to be able to receive emails created using New Ticket triggers when the email is forwarded into Zendesk using the options above in the article?
Hi Brian!
I'm not sure I understand what you're asking. When an agent's email is included in the To: field when a ticket is forwarded into your Zendesk, what email should they be receiving that they're not getting?
In our setup we have agent1@domain.com and agent2@domain.com. These are are individual company email accounts under 365. They are also setup in Zendesk as the agent's login/email.
I have a rule in 365 that says if the sender is x set of customers and the email is addressed to either agent1@ or agent2@, forward the email to support@domain.zendesk.com. That works, except if the original recipient in the To field is agent1@ then only agent2 gets the new ticket email notification from Zendesk. If the original recipient is agent2@ then only agent1@ gets the new ticket email notification from Zendesk.
It has to do with Zendesk seeing the original To recipient also being an agent email address in Zendesk and adds it as a Forged Recipient, which in turns makes the assumption that the original (either agent1@ or agent2@) got the original email.
Went through a support ticket (#4082658) and was told that this is the way the system is setup and there is no work around.
My current work around is to set rules in 365 that strips out the To header and replaces it with support@domain.zendesk.com, but this also loses any other recipients that were on the email originally.
I was trying to get Zendesk going as almost an "email only" style setup, but this one thing is the one road block that keeps it from working that way.
Just ran a test. To simplify what I have above, I set my account to forward all email to our Zendesk support account, so no 365 transport rules, no multiple agents, just my account forwarded to Zendesk using the forwarding option under my account when logged into Office 365 webmail.
The email comes to my 365 tenant, gets forwarded to Zendesk, creates the new ticket, but bypasses sending me a New Ticket email notification out of Zendesk (because my actual email account and my zendesk account/email match).
In the scenario, the only way that I would know that someone as sent me a new email request is to use either the mobile Zendesk app or leave the browser logged into Zendesk at all times.
Hi Brian L. The support team are correct, this is a feature - not a bug. If you're trying to manage tickets via Outlook, you're going to have to login to Zendesk at some point to solve/close tickets, so all you're really doing is double handling. With no rules though, the new email request should also show up in outlook as a new email, shouldn't it?
I had a similar scenario in our organisation. The underlying problem in our case was more change management and system adoption, and while there are a couple of work arounds the simplest solution is also the easiest: If Zendesk is your help desk - leave zendesk open, and action everything from there.
"But that's not how we do things..." is something I used to hear a lot - the correct response to which is "That's nice dear, but if you're not going to use the system as intended then I'm not going to help you". Harsh, but systematically fair and accurate. Using a system other than the way it was intended is going to cause problems, and (generally speaking) when it comes to system issues the Problem is In the Chair, and Not In the Computer. Furthermore, if you're responsible for administering the help desk you're making your life more difficult from the get go. Retro-fixing an existing Zendesk instance is not a headache I'd wish on anyone. Do yourself (and your company) a favour, and set it up as it's designed to be.
Depending on your org structure and business processes, you could try creating a shared O365 mailbox and using that as the main Zendesk account. Standard disclaimer: do not share username and passwords with others etc etc. - but if you can get something working and put business processes in place to cover yourself then you should be fine to do whatever works as a work around (nudge nudge, wink wink).
One other benefit to this setup, is it also provides business continuity coverage in the event you're not there to action tickets.
You might find that 3-6 licenses will be enough to keep customers happy and your support desk operating smoothly. Happy help desking.
Hi, Zendesk account shows my support email as correctly forwarding, however each an every incoming email has FW in the subject and they all have My Support as requester, not the original sender.
Has the forwarding been set up wrong after all?
Hi Janis,
Can you confirm you've set up your forwarding rules using the following documentation:
Additionally, does this support email you added show up under Admin>Channels>Email. It may be worth removing the forwarding rule and support address and reconfiguring to see if that resolves the issue.
If you continue experiencing issues with emails forwarding with the original sender let me know and I'll get a ticket created on your behalf to troubleshoot further.
Thanks!
Hi Brett,
Thanks for the quick reply. The thing is, I am not the person configuring the email server and I am trying to troubleshoot and give advice on how to fix this, as I am the person working with the account. The initial instructions given to IT followed your guide, but I am not in a position to directly verify their implementation.
My company support email has been added as support email and shows up under Admin>Channels>Email. Right there is also shows that email forwarding has been verified.
SPF records have not yet been set up, but I don't think that has anything to do with incoming emails.
I initially suspected that IT has simply messed up the forwarding, but Zendesk showing forwarding as verified has me confused.
Hi Janis,
We may need to take a look at a couple of ticket examples here so I'm going to generate a ticket on your behalf and pass this over to our Customer Advocacy team.
You'll receive a follow-up email shortly stating your ticket has been created so feel free to reply back to that with any examples you have.
Thanks!
Hi,
sorry, maybe I am the only one that finds the Exchange part quite confusingly forumulated.
In my opinion you have 2 possibilities:
1. create a mailbox and set up forwarding as a rule or in the ECP
2. create a mail contact (no Exchange mailbox involved, as written in the text): doesn't matter if a mail user or mail contact
Both options serve the same purpose, to have an alias for the own domain that points to Zendesk.
I would suggest this gets re-written, especially as an on-premise mailbox, or Office 365 costs (if not license then space and maintenance).
Best
Martin
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