How to turn on email in Zendesk

The following article will help you add the email channel to your account. You can follow our beta in-product tutorial or follow our setup guides in step 2.

1. In-product tutorial

Complete a tutorial in your own account by selecting your subdomain:

Go to my account

.zendesk.com Go to my account

Disclaimer: This button takes you into a part of your account that is only available for administrators. This beta experience can sometimes be blocked by ad blockers and is currently only for accounts where the default language is set to English.

2. Article guides

Choose from one of the setup experiences below:

• "Quick setup" lets you choose between two options:
  • the default Zendesk email experience,
  • or the use of a Gmail address.
• "Custom setup" walks you through using your company's existing email address with Zendesk.
• After setting up your email, the "Verify setup" section of this article shows you how to ensure that everything is working properly.

Quick setup  Custom setup  Verify setup

Email settings

Follow this path: Product tray > Admin Center > Channels > Talk and Email > Email to the email settings.

Now that you're on the email settings page, continue with one of the quick setup options available:

1. The default experience
2. The Google connector

The default experience

Are you okay with the email address that customers see on support tickets ending with ".zendesk.com"? Are you okay with customers emailing that address directly?

If the answer is yes to both of those questions, the default address that was automatically created on your settings page is ready to start sending email.

For information on adding more default addresses, see this article: Adding a Zendesk support address.

Alternatively, you can watch the video below for a visual walk through:

The Google connector

If you're adding a Gmail address and want to avoid extensive setup, select Add address > Connect external address > Sign in with Google. After you sign into your Gmail account, you're giving Zendesk permission to automatically pull emails from that address into your account.

For more information, see this article: Enabling automatic ticket creation for your Gmail inbox.

Adding your own email address

Zendesk will gladly display your company's already existing email address when a customer receives an update from your account. There is a bit of additional setup first.

From the email settings page (Product tray > Admin Center > Channels > Talk and Email > Email), follow these steps:

1. Select Add address > Connect external address
2. Enter the email address you'd like to send and receive emails from
3. Pause on this screen and advance to the next section on forwarding

Setting up email forwarding

Note: If you added your address by signing directly into Google, you don't need to set up email forwarding.

To add your company's email address to your account, you'll need to:

1. Log into your company's email client
2. Update the forwarding settings to ensure that any time a customer sends an email to that address it forwards to your default Zendesk email address
3. After you've set up forwarding, tick the box that reads Yes, I finished setting up forwarding with my email provider
4. Select Verify

This will ensure that when a customer emails your company's address it creates a ticket in Zendesk. This part of the process takes place outside of your Zendesk account, so you many need an email administrator to support you.

How do I know my email setup is working?

After adding your company's email address, locate the address on the settings page (Product tray > Admin Center > Channels > Talk and Email > Email). Below the address you should see the following confirmation:

• Forwarding verified
• SPF record is valid
• DNS records are set up correctly

If you set your address by signing into Google, only the forwarding check will be visible.

To set your mind at ease, you can also send in a test ticket to your email address and verify that it creates a ticket in your account.