Enabling attachments in tickets

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Quick Look: Admin Center > Objects and rules > Tickets > Settings

Agents and end users can send each other attachments through tickets. Zendesk Support accepts attachments from users sent in via the API, email, web form, Web Widget, and Web Widget (Classic) channels in your help center.

Administrators can configure how attachments are handled in a number of ways, including setting privacy rules, end user permissions, and attachment methods.

This article includes the following topics:

• About email attachments
• Enabling email attachments for agents
• Allowing end users to attach files to tickets
• Enabling private attachments
• Attachment size limitations

About email attachments

Agents and end users can add attachments when creating or updating a ticket, or replying to an email notification. The attachments become linked attachments, which are links to external files that can be used to download the attachments, if and when they’re needed. This is the default behavior for attachments sent by email and this is what happens when email attachments are not enabled.

If email attachments are enabled, the behavior is different. Agents and end users can send email attachments instead of linked attachments. Email notifications caused by creating or updating a ticket, or replying to an email, include actual attachments, instead of links to attachments. Email attachments appear as images and are a preview of the first page of the file.

There are two types of email attachments:

• Inline attachment: You can drag and drop files into the body of an email or comment. The image of the file appears wherever you dropped the file.
• Appended attachment: Attachments that appear at the bottom of a comment and that send as part of the comment's email notification.

Note: If you've set up business rules to send automated replies to end users (with placeholders such as ticket.verbatim_description), any attachments originally sent by the end user will not be included in the automated email notification.

All files attached via email are scanned for malware before being sent in an email notification. If an attachment is found to include a virus, several actions are taken. The attachment:

• Isn't included in the email notification. Instead, the recipient is notified that an attachment wasn't sent.
• Won't be visible within the ticket to end users.
• Will be visible within the ticket to agents but labeled with a malware warning and unavailable for download.
• Will be visible within the ticket to admins but labeled with a malware warning. Admins can download potentially malicious attachments and choose to override the restricted access for agents.

The sender does not receive a notification when an attachment is not sent.

When email attachment file size limitations are exceeded, links to attachments appear in email notifications instead (see Attachment size limitations).

Note: Some attachments may initiate Zendesk firewall rules. For example, if your attachment contains code, the firewall rule may be initiated. Zendesk recommends you zip or encrypt the file to bypass this rule.

Here are examples of what attachments look like to agents and end users.

Situation	Example
Linked email attachment in an email notification in Gmail account
Email attachment in an email notification in Gmail account
Attachment in the ticket interface in Support
Malicious attachment in the ticket interface in Support (visible only to team members)

Enabling email attachments for agents

The default attachment configuration allows your agents to add files to ticket comments and email notifications as links. You can allow agents to attach files directly to the comment. This type of attachment is stored in Zendesk Support and is accessible from the ticket interface. You can attach any file type you want.

Note: The types of comment placeholders you use in ticket triggers can also affect whether email attachments appear as links. Use rich text comment placeholders to allow attachments when Include attachments in emails is turned on.

You can also allow end users to add attachments to tickets (see Allowing end users to attach files to tickets).

To enable email attachments

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
2. In the Attachments section, select Include attachments in emails.
   Note: This setting does not appear and cannot be enabled if secure downloads is enabled.
3. At the bottom of the page, click Save tab.

Once enabled, when an agent attaches a file to a comment, it is included as an attachment rather than a link. Only files attached to the current ticket comment are included in the email notification. Files attached to earlier ticket comments are not attached to later email notifications.

For information about how to send an attachment as an agent, see Adding attachments to ticket comments.

Allowing end users to attach files to tickets

You can allow end users to send attachments when filing a ticket or responding to an email notification.

The permissions granted to agents, described in Enabling email attachments for agents, apply to end users when this setting is configured. Additionally, inline attachments are available only for signed-in end users.

To enable attachments from end users

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
2. In the Attachments section, select Customers can attach files.
3. Click Save tab.

Enabling private attachments

Attachments usually aren't indexed by search engines or included in threat intelligence platforms (TIPs) unless their URLs are publicly shared, like in a help center article or within email notifications to users. Regular attachments to tickets are secured using a URL with an attachment token that is considerably complex and random, but are visible to anyone with the URL and token. When relying on this type of security, if an email notification is misdirected to someone other than the intended end user, sensitive information may be accidentally exposed.

If sensitive documents are attached to your tickets, especially identification documents such as passports and driver's licenses, you can enable private attachments. When enabled, agents must be signed in to view attachments.

End users can see private attachments in their tickets in help center because they have to sign in to view their tickets. However, the attachments will appear as links in email tickets. They'll need to click the links and sign in to the help center to view the attachments.

Note the following about enabling private attachments:

• Private attachments can only be used if Guide is activated. If Guide isn't activated, private attachments prevent end users from downloading attachments since they can't be authenticated.
• If you enable private attachments, it will disable inline images for users who aren't signed in, and it will also prevent agents and admins from being able to add inline images in Support. Inline images are disabled only for Zendesk hosted images and not images that are publicly accessible.
• When an attachment is associated with a ticket, visibility is restricted to users with access to the ticket.
• In the Zendesk Agent Workspace, this setting also applies to attachments sent as part of a live chat, but it does not apply to web, mobile, or social messaging attachments (see Securing chat attachments in the Zendesk Agent Workspace).
• In web and mobile messaging, private attachments are not currently allowed.

To enable private attachments

1. In Admin Center, click Objects and rules in the sidebar, then select Tickets > Settings.
2. In the Attachments section, select Enable secure downloads.
   Note: Include attachments in emails doesn't appear and can't be enabled if secure downloads is enabled. Additionally, when you enable secure downloads, agents can't copy and paste images from their computer into ticket comments.
3. Click Save tab.

Attachment size limitations

Email and web form attachment limits are as follows:

• The inbound email and web form attachment limit for a single file is 50 MB.
• The total of all outbound email attachments cannot exceed 10 MB. When these limits are exceeded, Support will process the attachment as a linked attachment instead.
• The outbound email attachment limit for a single linked file is 50 MB. Up to 500 files can be attached.

  If you try to attach a file larger than 50 MB, an error message will display and inform you that the file is too large. The attachment will not be attached to the ticket (as either an email or linked attachment).

• When you upload GIF files with a large number of frames, the upload might fail with a timeout error. If this occurs, try recreating the GIF file with fewer frames.

For more information about attachment types, see About email attachments.

Attachments from earlier comments are included in email notifications as linked attachments. If you add multiple attachments to a reply, the attachments are prioritized based on the attachment type and size. Inline attachments take precedence over appended attachments when calculating size limits. Note that when inline attachments are sent as links, they still appear as images in the body of the email notification.

The scenarios below describe how this works.

Scenario 1

Two files are attached in the following order:

• Email attachment A (3 MB)
• Email attachment B (6 MB)

Behavior:

• Files A and B are included as email attachments.

Scenario 2

Three files are attached in the following order:

• Inline attachment A (5 MB)
• Email attachment B (5 MB)
• Email attachment C (4 MB)

Behavior:

• Inline attachment A is sent as an email attachment.
• Attachments B and C are included as file links, as they push the total email attachment file size over 10 MB.

Scenario 3

Three files are attached in the following order:

• Inline attachment A (5 MB)
• Inline attachment B (6 MB)
• Inline attachment C (4 MB)

Behavior:

• Attachment A is included as an email attachment.
• Attachment B is included as a file link, as it pushes the total email attachment file size over 10 MB.
• Attachment C is included as a real attachment, as it brings the total email attachment file size to 9 MB.

To change this setting, go to Admin >Manage > People > Roles and click Edit to the right of the agent's role.