If you experience issues with email or the behaviors below, see:
- An email message isn't delivered to or from Zendesk Support
- You don't receive emails to or from end users
- Emails don't create tickets
- An email is detected as spam
This article covers these issues:
You don't receive emails from your customers and tickets are not created or updated
To resolve tickets not created from an email:
Step 1: Verify which email address your end user contacted
To resolve a missing ticket or comment after an email arrives:
- Ask the sender to send you a copy of the email.
- Make sure the support email address appears in your email channel.
Step 2: Verify the forwarding status of your support email address
If you use a custom email domain:
- Check the forwarding status of your email address in your email channel.
- To fix errors, see How to fix the Forwarding check failed error.
If you use the Google Connector and the connection failed, reconnect the Gmail account and follow the Google authentication prompts.
If you use standard Gmail forwarding, confirm that Gmail forwards incoming messages to your Zendesk support address. Then return to Zendesk and select Verify forwarding.
If you use an external email address, ask your email administrator to confirm that forwarding is configured correctly. Changes to forwarding settings can take up to 48 hours to be recognized by Zendesk.
If normal traffic forwards but the support address does not verify, confirm that the forwarding service does not remove the email headers required by Zendesk.
Step 3: Verify your Suspended tickets view
To resolve messages from customers that don't create a ticket:
- Check whether the email appears in the Suspended tickets view, and check multiple pages if necessary.
- If the email appears suspended, see Causes for ticket suspension.
- Recover any ticket of your choice.
When you recover an email, you inform the spam filter that the email is legitimate. This action functions similarly to the Not Spam or Not junk button in your email inbox. You may need to recover a few emails before the system learns and allows future emails automatically.
If your end user does not use an email provider with properly configured Sender Policy Framework (SPF), DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM), or Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) settings, the enhanced sender authentication setting may flag their emails as spam.
Other reasons can cause email delivery issues. To troubleshoot further, see:
Step 4: Check your support email address configuration
Make sure the customer contacted a standard support email address listed in your email channel.
If an inbound email includes multiple support addresses, Zendesk creates a separate ticket for each support address when you turn on the multi-recipient email ticket feature in Admin Center. These tickets are linked automatically by a unique multi-recipient email id. For details on configuring this feature, see Turning on multi-recipient email tickets.
Zendesk does not support email aliases, distribution lists, or Google Groups as support addresses, as these addresses can cause delivery issues. If the email was sent to an alias or group address, ask the customer to resend it to a standard support address.
Step 5: Check if the ticket is hidden in your account
If the ticket exists but does not appear in your views, check the view conditions. Views display only tickets that match all required conditions. Also check whether the ticket is assigned to a group that you can access.
If the ticket appears updated without a visible customer response, the customer may have replied below the email delimiter. In this case, the reply updates the ticket without appearing as a visible comment.
Customers don't receive emails or outbound replies sent by your agents or team
To resolve instances where end users don't receive agent emails:
Step 1: Check the email delivery status
Check the ticket recipients for the delivery failure notice in the Zendesk Agent Workspace. You can view reasons for email delivery failure in the ticket next to the recipient's name.
To identify the cause of the error, click the warning icon next to a user name or view the ticket events log.
Step 2: Verify that a trigger sends your email in the ticket
If end users don't receive emails, a trigger may not have sent the email. Triggers are essential to email communication in Zendesk Support. Do not deactivate the default triggers that start with Notify requester in the title.
To ensure a trigger sends emails:
- Open the affected ticket events by adding
/eventsto the end of the ticket URL. - Under the comment left by the agent, check whether a trigger sent the email.
To manage your triggers if no trigger appears in the ticket:
- Check your triggers using the Filter button, and verify that triggers with Notify requester in the title are active.
- If these triggers are deactivated, select the checkbox for each trigger and click Activate.
- If no triggers named Notify requester appear, create your triggers again and match each trigger condition to About the standard ticket triggers.
Step 3: Verify default notification trigger conditions
Default triggers that notify customers should remain active and match the following conditions.
Notify requester and CCs of comment update
- Under Meet ALL of the following conditions:
Ticket > Ticket | Is | UpdatedandTicket > Comment | Is | Public - Under Actions:
Notify by | User email | Ticket (requester and CCs)
Notify requester of new proactive ticket
- Under Meet ALL of the following conditions:
Ticket > Ticket | Is | Created,Ticket > Privacy | Is | Ticket has public comments, andTicket details > Current user | Is | (agent) - Under Actions:
Notify by | Email user | (requester and CCs)
Ensure the email notification body contains at least one placeholder. Without a placeholder, the email does not send.
Step 4: Verify email forwarding
To verify email forwarding when the trigger sends emails and you use a custom domain:
- Check the forwarding status of the email address in your email channel.
- Verify that no forwarding error appears. If errors appear, see How to fix the Forwarding check failed error.
If you use Google Connector and the forwarding check fails, reconnect the Gmail account and follow the Google authentication prompts.
If you use standard Gmail forwarding, confirm that Gmail forwards messages to the Zendesk support address, then select Verify forwarding in Zendesk.
If you use an external email provider, ask your email administrator to confirm that forwarding is enabled and that required email headers are not removed.
Step 5: Verify the SPF record
An SPF record allows Zendesk to send emails on your behalf. Without an SPF record that includes Zendesk in your domain, recipient email servers may block emails sent from Zendesk.
- Check the SPF status of the email address in your email channel.
- Check the SPF record for your domain (for example,
example.com) using external tools such as MxToolbox. - If
include:mail.zendesk.comdoes not appear in your domain's SPF record, or if your SPF returns errors, customers may not receive your emails. - Troubleshoot any errors with this guide: How to fix the email error messages on forwarding, SPF, DNS, and TXT records.
Your domain can have only one SPF record. If you use multiple email services, combine them into a single SPF record that includes all required sources.
Common SPF issues include duplicate records, invalid syntax, unsupported IP addresses, exceeding 10 DNS lookups, flattened SPF records, and DNS propagation delays. After making changes, allow up to 48 hours for the record to verify.
To resolve errors, contact your domain administrator to edit the existing TXT record to include include:mail.zendesk.com.
Step 6: Verify the DKIM signature
Configuring DKIM signatures is highly recommended to secure outbound emails.
- Add the two Zendesk domain keys to the DNS records of your email domain.
- Activate digital signatures in Zendesk. For complete instructions, see Digitally signing your email with DKIM.
To confirm that you added the records correctly to your domain, see How do I know if my DKIM records are configured correctly?
Step 7: Verify DMARC configuration
DMARC works alongside SPF and DKIM to secure your domain and ensure your emails reach customers. Without DMARC, strict email providers may filter or reject your emails.
Check with your domain administrator to confirm a DMARC policy is configured for your domain.
As a best practice, start with a policy of p=none to monitor your email traffic. After you verify that all legitimate emails (including those sent from Zendesk) authenticate properly via SPF and DKIM, update to a stricter policy such as p=quarantine or p=reject.
Step 8: Verify delivery status with the recipient
If a trigger sends your emails and the SPF record for your domain includes Zendesk Support, the recipient server may still block incoming emails. A bounce-back notification might not appear in your Suspended tickets view.
To verify status with the recipient:
- Contact the recipient with details from the blocked email.
- Ask the recipient to check their spam or junk folder.
- If the email is not in spam, ask the recipient to verify why their server blocked your email.
- Ask the recipient if they can update their security settings to accept future emails from your agents.
Email delivery depends on the recipient relay server. Each organization uses filters and security settings that are outside the control of Zendesk Customer Support.