How can I stop an email loop?

Question

When some of my users receive a notification from Zendesk, an auto-response sends a message back to Zendesk. This creates a new ticket and causes a loop. How can I stop an email loop?

Answer

Some Zendesk end-user emails have automated replies set up in their email client. There are two options on how to deal with this issue.

• Option A: Use triggers to stop the loop
• Option B: Add the email to your blocklist

Option A: Use triggers to stop the loop

Create a trigger that adds a tag to the tickets created from the automated emails. Then, edit your existing notification triggers to ignore the tickets with the tag.

1. Create a new trigger
2. Under Conditions, add:
   • Ticket > Comment text | Contains the following string | enter a string of text that is part of your email template
3. Under Actions, add:
   • Ticket > Add tags | automated_response
   • Ticket > Status category | Solved
     Add any other required actions to solve your tickets.
4. Click Create trigger
   
5. Move the trigger near to the top of your trigger list to make sure it fires early
   
6. Modify your existing triggers that send notifications to customers. Under Conditions, add:
   • Ticket > Tags | Contains none of the following | automated_response
7. Click Save

Note: In accounts with custom ticket statuses deactivated, use the condition Status instead of Status category.

Option B: Add the email to your blocklist

Block your support email address to hide the tickets from your queue. The tickets will appear in the Suspended tickets view.

1. Add the support email address to your blocklist. Use the format, reject:[e-mail] suspend:[e-mail].
2. Manually review the suspended tickets and delete those that are related to the automated responses. Proceed with caution, as there is a risk of deleting legitimate emails through this process.

For more information about mail loops and how Zendesk handles email, see the article: About mail loops and Zendesk email.