How to setup Email

Understanding Email Setup in Zendesk

• When you set up Zendesk Support, you have one default email address: support@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com. Emails received at this address become tickets.
• You can provide users with alternative email addresses for submitting tickets, known as support addresses. These can be variations of your Zendesk email address or external email addresses.
• Any email address you want to use to receive support requests as tickets must be added to your Zendesk as a support address. You can have up to 3000 support addresses.
• For each support address you add, the "from" address will match the support address the ticket is sent to. For example, tickets sent to help@acme.zendesk.com will reply from help@acme.zendesk.com.

Adding Support Email Addresses

• Support addresses can be variations of your Zendesk email address or existing external email addresses.
  • Connect external address: Use this option to add an existing external email address.
  • Create new Zendesk address: Use this option to add variations of your Zendesk email address.

Adding a Zendesk Support Address

• Zendesk addresses are variations of your original support address, such as help@yoursubdomain.zendesk.com.
  1. In Admin Center, click Channels in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Email.
  2. In the Support addresses section, click Add address, then select Create new Zendesk address.
  3. Enter an address you'd like to use for receiving support requests.
  4. Click Create now.

Adding an External Support Address

• External email addresses are owned and maintained by you, outside of Zendesk (for example, support@mycompany.com). You can receive support requests at an external email address and forward the incoming email to Zendesk.
  1. In Admin Center, click Channels in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Email.
  2. In the Support addresses section, click Add address, then select Connect external address.
  3. Select Email forwarding, then click Next.
  4. Enter your existing support email address in the Enter current support address field, then click Go.
  5. Complete the on-screen steps to set up forwarding on your email server.

Setting up Email Forwarding

• Forwarding from an external domain to Zendesk Support involves two steps:
  1. Adding your external support address in Zendesk.
  2. Setting up forwarding in your email service so that incoming email is forwarded to a Zendesk support address.
• Important: Set up automatic forwarding at the server level rather than manually forwarding from an email client.
• When adding your external support address to Zendesk Support, a wizard displays the steps you need to take to set up forwarding in both Zendesk and your external email account.

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and DNS Verification

• If you use your own email address to receive support requests, and you've added your email address as a support address in Zendesk, then you can set up your custom email domain to verify that Zendesk can send email on behalf of your email server.
• It's recommended if you use your own custom email domain and have set up forwarding to an external email address.
• To allow Zendesk to send email on behalf of your email domain, Zendesk stops sending messages from zendesk.com, and sends them from your domain, preserving your branding.
• To create or edit an SPF record to reference Zendesk:
  • Edit your domain's DNS settings to add a TXT record.
  • Zendesk recommends using the following SPF record: v=spf1 include:mail.zendesk.com -all.
• To verify that a domain belongs to you:
  1. Make sure you have finished setting up your SPF record.
  2. In Admin Center, click Channels in the sidebar, then select Talk and email > Email.
  3. Edit your domain's DNS settings and add this TXT record:
     • Type: TXT
     • Name: zendeskverification
     • Value: your unique value found in Support
  4. After you add the TXT record, click the Verify DNS records button to confirm that your records are now valid.