Can I forward emails into my account without setting up forwarding in Zendesk?

Question

Can I use an external email address to create tickets that is not added under Support addresses? I see that most emails still create tickets when I use this workflow.

Answer

You can use an external support address that is not added as a support address in your Zendesk. However, this setup is not recommended for the following reasons:

• The external support address may be added as a CC'ed end user to all of your tickets. This can be confusing for agents.
• Notifications are not sent to customers from your external support address, for example, [e-mail]. Instead, they are sent from your default Zendesk address which looks like [e-mail].
• You are unable to use the Ticket: Received at trigger condition with your external support address.

If you use an external support address without adding it to Zendesk, you will receive a This email address is already used error when you try to add it as a support address. This error occurs because when using this workflow the address is eventually added as an end user account.

To resolve this error, see the article: What does the error "This email address is already used by..." mean?

For more information on how forwarding works in Zendesk, see this article: Forwarding incoming email into Zendesk Support.