This article might get out of sync with the Gmail interface. You can also refer to Google's documentation to route users' email to another address.
You can receive support requests at a Gmail or Google Apps account, and forward it to your Zendesk email address.
If you're using another email client, see Forwarding your incoming support email to Zendesk.
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.
To forward email to Zendesk using Gmail/Google Apps
- Log in to Gmail using the support address you'd like to setup forwarding for.
- Click the Gear icon in the upper right hand corner, and click Settings.
- Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP.
- Click the Add a forwarding address button, and enter your Zendesk support email address (support@yourcompany.zendesk.com).
- In the confirmation pop-up window, click Proceed. Another pop-up will inform you that: A confirmation code has been sent to support@yourcompany.zendesk.com to verify permission.
- Log in to your Zendesk account, and click the Views icon (
) in the sidebar to open the Views list. - Open the view All unsolved tickets. You should see a ticket with Gmail Forwarding Confirmation in the subject line. If you do not see the ticket in All unsolved tickets, check the Suspended tickets view as well.
- Open the ticket and copy the Confirmation code, then go back to Gmail and paste the code in the new box under Forwarding:
- Click the Verify button.
- Click the new option, Forward a copy of incoming mail to and then Save Changes.
- If setup properly, you should see a notice on the Gmail top bar "You are forwarding your email to support@yourcompany.zendesk.com. This notice will end in 7 days."
- Go back to your Zendesk. Click the Admin icon (
) on the sidebar, then click Channels > Email. - Click add address and add your new forwarding Gmail address and a name for it.
If these steps aren't working, or you're seeing something different in your email account, please refer to Google's email forwarding documentation.
13 Comments
We use this feature all the time, but up until now, it's only been company sanctioned aliases, through our corporate google account. One of our teams has created a user facing alias as a personal gmail account and wants to route these tickets through Zendesk. Are there precautions we should take or any security risks?
Getting the following message after changing password on gmail account
''Unable to receive emails from this address. We can't connect to your Gmail account because your OAuth credentials are invalid. Please reconnect.''
Please help, very frustrating.
Kind Regards,
Adam
Hey Adam!
If you've changed your password for your Gmail account then you'll need to reconnect the account to your Zendesk since we would not have your current authentication information. The "Please reconnect" message is asking you to use the "Reconnect" button that will appear in bold underneath the support address you are experiencing these difficulties with on your Email configuration page under Admin > Channels > Email.
HI!
I've connected my new gmail address to our zendesk account so all mails send to this new gmail are send to our Zendesk account. However, before connecting there were already about 200 mails in in my gmail inbox which I'd like to be visible to Zendesk as well. How can I do this?
Hi Renée!
The forwarding rules set up in this doc are very straightfoward; it will only forward mail sent after the rule was established.
If you'd like to import old email, you can use the Gmail connector, which allows you to import up to 50 older emails:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203663296-Enabling-automatic-ticket-creation-for-your-Gmail-inbox
Unfortunately this wouldn't cover all 200 of your old emails, but it's the best option in this case.
We currently have all of our individual agent's G Suite email addresses forwarding to a "team" Google Group email address (with some filters on the gmail side that allow us to use those email addresses for internal communication while forwarding external messages to Zendesk). Each of the team addresses is set as a support address in our Zendesk instance, so all of our email forwards to Zendesk and is auto-assigned to the proper group via trigger.
Is it possible to set things up (either with a Gmail filter, Zendesk trigger, or both) such that the original recipient is also auto-assigned in Zendesk, rather than just the group? We do not want an agent's individual email address as a support address within Zendesk, but do want to streamline the process of assigning tickets within a team as much as possible.
Hi Cory!
That's an interesting workflow. Have you checked out our Mail API? This allows your agents to set various ticket properties, including Requester, when they forward the email to Zendesk.
Jessie,
I have looked into the Mail API, but our agents aren't manually forwarding any email to Zendesk, it's happening via a Gmail filter. In fact, they don't even see emails from outside our domain coming into their Gmail inbox. They bypass the inbox, get marked as read, and forward to their Zendesk team email address.
From everything I've been able to surmise, there is not a way to edit either the subject or body of an email using a Gmail filter, nor can you redirect an email rather than forward it via Gmail. Both of these realities prevent us from utilizing the Mail API, at least in my understanding of it. If I'm missing something (hopefully I am), I'd love to be able to use the Mail API to accomplish the ticket assignment.
I am able to see the original recipient by viewing the original email from within a ticket, but I haven't figured out a way to get a trigger to act on that information. Is it possible to do so?
I appreciate any help you can provide! It's not the end of the world to manually assign tickets from within a group, but if there's a way to bypass that step I'd love to. Thanks!
Hi Cory!
Just to clarify, these API commands are really not used upon ticket creation from the side of the requester, as there would be no way to add them before the email being forwarded to your Zendesk address. These are commonly used by agents who use email as their main way to reply to tickets, via the notifications sent by Zendesk to the agents when a ticket they are assigned to is replied by an end-user. So these are used when an agent reply to a query from an end user via email, adding the commands before their reply, and not upon ticket creation (unless agents are creating tickets via email on behalf of end users, case which they can add the API commands at the top of the first message being sent by them to your support address)
I hope this helps!
Need clarification on this post. If I have employed "SPF" and authorized ZenDesk to send mail on behalf of my domain, then for step #4 in this article, would I still need to configure this support address?
support@yourcompany.zendesk.com
OR could/should I be only setting up forwarding for this email address?
support@yourcompany.com
FYI (More Context): All incoming support requests will use this email address: support@yourcompany.com, and because I've setup SPF/CNAME for Zendesk, all outbound email should be coming from support@yourcompany.com
VS
support@yourcompany.zendesk.com
Please advise!
Amberlynn
Hi Amberlynn,
If you've already set up a forwarding rule to forward emails from support@yourcompany.com to support@yourcompany.zendesk.com and tickets are successfully generating in your account then you shouldn't need to take any additional steps.
If you're experiencing issues with tickets generating in your account let me know!
Hi there,
Will this import all the stored emails from Gmail when this connection is made?
Thank you,
Jessica.
Hi Jessica,
No. It will import the emails going forward from the time of implementation but would not import stored emails.
If you'd like to import old email, you can use the Gmail connector, which allows you to import up to 50 older emails:
https://support.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/203663296-Enabling-automatic-ticket-creation-for-your-Gmail-inbox
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