Announced on | Rollout on |
October 31, 2024 | October 31, 2024 |
Starting today, you can configure your Zendesk account to use the new Authenticated SMTP Connector to relay authenticated email. The Authenticated SMTP Connector lets you connect a non-Zendesk email server to your Zendesk Support instance. It is specifically designed for organizations that prefer to use their own email servers or cannot use third-party email servers due to internal corporate policies, data regulations, or encryption needs.
This announcement includes the following topics:
What's changing?
You can now set up the Authenticated SMTP Connector to relay authenticated email between your business server and Zendesk.
There are two different ways you can set up the connector to meet the needs of your company. Each has a distinctive way of relaying email, so it's important to understand how you intend to use it.
- Use two-way authenticated relay if you need to create a secure and authenticated two-way inbound/outbound connection with your email domain or service and Zendesk's inbound/outbound servers. This requires more setup and configuration with your domain or email service, but it is ideal for on-premise servers or domains that leverage additional layers of security on inbound/outbound traffic, like Mimecast.
- Use outbound-only authenticated relay to use standard auto-forwarding of inbound email traffic to Zendesk, but allow for an authenticated outbound connection with your email domain or service, so all outbound sending for the connected addresses occurs through your domain or email service. This setup allows for cloud-based email services that don’t offer authenticated outbound relays to other systems, like Exchange Online, Office365 Cloud, and Google Workspace.
Why is Zendesk making this change?
Our customers requested more secure methods to have their email traffic arrive at Zendesk, and for Zendesk to send outbound traffic through.
The Authenticated SMTP Connector:
- Ensures outbound TLS encryption (inbound also with the two-way version).
- Allows for authoritative sending (SPF/DKIM) and delivery tracking from your domain.
- More easily satisfies information handling, redaction, and compliance requirements or policies before outbound sending.
- Provides actionable visibility into unauthenticated inbound email ticket creation and update events (two-way version only).
While the Authenticated SMTP Connector is platform-agnostic and relies on well-established protocols that already exist within most email services, we created two versions to better suit the needs of our customers' email needs and configurations.
What do I need to do?
No action is required. If you don't need authenticated email relays, you can continue using Zendesk as you have up until now.
If you're interested in using the Authenticated SMTP Connector, you can learn more here.
If you have feedback or questions related to this announcement, visit our community forum where we collect and manage customer product feedback. For general assistance with your Zendesk products, contact Zendesk Customer Support.
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