Once you have signed up for a Freshservice account, the first thing you probably want to do is start taking requests from your employees. The most common way to do this would be to set up a support email address where your users can send in issues and service requests.
By default, your Freshservice account comes with a default address that looks like support@yourcompany.freshservice.com. Any email sent to this address gets converted into a ticket inside Freshservice automatically.
A quick guide to setting up your support email:
1. Set up your support mailbox in Freshservice
Login to your Freshservice account.
Go to Admin > Channels > Email > Email Settings and Mailbox.
If your account has more than one workspace, go to Admin > {Workspace Name} > Channels > Email > Email Settings and Mailbox.
Note: Each workspace can have its own support emails configured. In case you want to use the same support email across all workspaces, you can configure a unified helpdesk email for the primary workspace and use global workflow automation to route tickets to the right workspace based on the content of the email.
- Under All mailboxes or All mailboxes for {Workspace Name}, click the primary email address to edit it. If you want to create multiple support addresses, click Add mailbox.
Give your support email a name (like MyCompany Helpdesk). This will be the “From” name that your customers see in your reply emails.
Enter your support email address. This will also be the reply-to address for the emails you send from your service desk.
Save your email configuration settings.
2. Verify your email and set up forwarding rules
You would have received an email from your help desk to the email id you've setup.
Click the verification link in the email to confirm your email. You can also copy-paste the link into your browser.
Create a rule in your mailbox to forward incoming emails to your Freshservice specified email id (for example, support@yourcompany.freshservice.com).
3. Create an SPF record to improve deliverability
Sometimes your receiver's mail servers may mark the emails you send through Freshservice as SPAM. This happens because you have not yet "authorized" freshservice.com to send emails on your behalf. To ensure your emails are delivered, you should create a Sender Policy Framework (SPF) record in your DNS servers.
Create an SPF record in your DNS Zone file to include email.freshservice.com. See Sender Policy Framework for more information.
The top-level management may want to know what's going on in your support without being added as agents. You can add these email addresses as BCC while setting up the support mailbox.
A quick guide on setting up BCC
- Login to your support portal as an Administrator.
- Go to Admin > Channels > Email > Email Settings and Mailbox.
If your account has more than one workspace, go to Admin > {Workspace Name} > Channels > Email > Email Settings and Mailbox.
Note: Each workspace can have its own support emails configured. In case you want to use the same support email across all workspaces, you can configure a unified helpdesk email for the primary workspace and use global workflow automation to route tickets to the right workspace based on the content of the email. Click Add Bcc above the listed support emails.
- Enter all the email addresses you want to add as Bcc, separated by commas.
- Save your email configuration settings.
Forwarding emails from a private inbox to your support portal
Occasionally, your customers may email your support agents directly or you may have a mailbox full of emails that need to be converted to support tickets. This can be done by just forwarding them to your support email address. Tickets forwarded from a verified agent's email address are created in the name of the customer who sent the email to the agent. But when you forward existing emails from a mailbox (where this mailbox is not associated with an agent), the requester will be the mailbox and the timestamp of the ticket will be the time the email was forwarded.
Note: Do not use a Group Email for converting emails to tickets. Gmail and a few other providers suppress email notifications when an email is sent to group emails. Sometimes tickets will not be created and we will have no log of this.
See Configuring Email Notifications For New Tickets to understand how to configure email notifications. Configurations for tickets and projects that cut across all workspaces can be configured globally. For example, user activation and agent activation emails that apply to the entire account can be configured globally. To configure notifications specific to your workspace, you can configure email notifications at the workspace level.
Also, whenever an email is sent from one of the mailboxes you configured in Freshservice to another (or if one of the configured mailboxes is in the CC), a ticket will not be generated. This has been done to prevent email looping. So it's always a better idea to forward emails to support to create tickets.
For Exchange/Office 365 Customers
Microsoft rules state that the emails will be ‘redirected’ to the other contact.
To check the properties of the shared mailbox, click Mail Flow settings under Mailbox Features. This has the option to Enable forwarding. You must enable this and select the internal mailbox/contact to forward to.
Faq's
1. Why do I receive an error message stating "Reply email cannot be one of the user emails" when attempting to add a support email?
This error occurs when a requester or agent profile is using the same email address. Once you remove the respective user from the portal (Go to Admin > Agent/Requester > Select the respective email > Click the ellipsis icon on the top right > Click Forget user), you will be able to add this email to your mailbox.
2. How to restrict certain email domains from creating tickets in my instance?
Go to Global Settings > Admin > Support Portal. Then, under "Email Domain Restriction," choose "Users from specified domains" and add the relevant domains. Please be aware that existing user profiles from domains not included here will still be able to create tickets in your portal.
3. Tickets are not being created from specific users, how to resolve them?
The issue might be caused by one of the following reasons:
Email Domain Restriction: If you have restricted users from specific email domains, make sure the user's domain is allowed by going to Admin (or the respective workspace) > Support Portal > Email Domain Restriction. This will allow external emails to create tickets.
Check the Spam Folder: Navigate to the Tickets List, click on the three lines, and go to Spam. If you find any tickets there, unmark them as spam. Also, review and adjust any automation rules that might be sending tickets to spam.
Reply-to Email Address Setting: In Admin > Email Settings and Mailboxes, ensure Use the Reply-to email address to create contacts is disabled. If this setting is enabled, the Reply-to address becomes the requester or contact, but Domain Restriction may prevent requester/contact and ticket creation.
Support Email Addresses: If both the From and To addresses are helpdesk support emails, this issue will be caused and is the expected behavior.
For forwarded emails, consider original sender as ticket's contact: If you have domain restriction in your portal (Admin > Global Settings > Support Portal) and also if "For forwarded emails, consider original sender as ticket's contact" is enabled, this may be the cause of the issue if the respective user domain is not added. Also, note that if the original sender is a helpdesk email, and this option is enabled, this issue will be observed. This is because the From and To addresses both cannot be support mailbox emails from the instance.
4. When an agent forwards an email to the help desk, it creates the original sender as the requester. How can we prevent this functionality?
Go to the respective workspace Admin > Email Settings and Mailboxes > For forwarded emails, consider original sender as ticket's contact, which might be the cause of this issue.
5. How can we allow external users to send emails to create tickets without creating an account?
If the user does not have an existing account with your portal, an account will be automatically created when they submit a ticket. This is the default behavior.
6. When an external party is CCed on a ticket, their replies are being blocked. How can I allow these emails to go through?
Please check if your email domain restriction is enabled by navigating to Admin (or the respective workspace) > Support Portal > Email Domain Restriction. Add the domain of the CC'ed user to the allowed list. This will ensure that users' replies are received and that they are also created as requesters.
7. How can I create a service request ticket through email?
By default, emails will only create incidents. To create a service request, users must go to the portal and raise a service item request.
8. How can I forward an email to Freshservice and have it added as a note to an existing ticket?
When you have an email thread that created a ticket, Freshservice will append replies to the ticket if the reply is from the ticket requester or anyone involved in the ticket conversation (e.g., CCed in the ticket conversation, added as an approver, or if the ticket was forwarded to them). Freshservice checks for the Message ID and Ticket ID in the subject line to append the reply to the original ticket accordingly.
The system looks for the Ticket ID in the subject line, which must be in the format [#{{ticket.id}}] (e.g., [#INC-12345], where the ticket ID is INC-12345). This method is used for replies to emails sent by Automations or Email Notifications.
