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When you sign up and create a Freshdesk account, an Email channel will be crucial for managing customer inquiries effectively. Hence, as a first step, we recommend you to set up your Support Email.


User Requirements: Ensure that you have an administrator role to set up and configure Email for your account. 


This article contains:


Types of Emails

Freshdesk provides a default support email in the format support@yourcompany.freshdesk.com (also known as wildcard support address, for example, support@acme-tech.freshdesk.com) once you sign up to handle your support operations via Email. Any emails you receive on this address are automatically converted to tickets with the customer as the requester. 


Additionally, you can also add multiple support email addresses to your email domain, such as support1@yourcompany.com, support2@yourcompany.com, etc for incoming and outgoing communications, streamlining support operations. For example, each department/team in your company can have different email addresses that can be configured with Freshdesk to handle support.


For each support email you configure, the reply emails from Freshdesk will automatically use the respective support email as the From email address. For example, if you receive tickets on support@acme-tech.com, the replies you send to customers will be from support@acme-tech.com.


Notes:
  • You can add multiple support emails from the Growth plan. However, if you are on the Free plan, you can add only one email.
  • We recommend you to use the support email of your email domain to avoid any issues with ticket creation.

Types of mail servers


While setting up additional support emails, Freshdesk provides you the option to choose the email server and email client with which you would like to manage your email transactions (incoming and outgoing):


Freshdesk mail server:  Manage all your incoming and outgoing email transactions via the Freshdesk mail server. If you choose to use this option, you have to additionally configure forwarding rules in your email client (support mailbox) to forward the emails as tickets in your Freshdesk account. 


Custom mail server: You can also use custom email servers or public servers like Gmail or Microsoft to send and receive emails through Freshdesk. This lets you manage all your email transactions outside Freshdesk. 



You can learn more about adding a new support email here.


Configuring advanced email settings

Once you set up support emails for your Freshdesk account, you can configure advanced settings to customize your email setup. For example, you can allow agents to create new outbound tickets and choose to display their name as the sender on such tickets/replies. To view the advanced email settings:

  1. Go to Admin > Channels > Email.
  2. Click Advanced Settings.

Please refer to this article to understand more about the advanced settings options we support in customizing email setup. 

Understanding how Email threading works


For every incoming email, Freshdesk performs the following checks to decide if the email should be created as a new ticket or threaded to an existing ticket as a reply:

  • Email markers check

  • Requester check



Email Markers Check

Freshdesk looks for the following three markers to decide if the email is a response to an ongoing ticket conversation, thus preventing duplicate tickets. 

  1. Ticket ID 

  2. Message-ID 

  3. Unique Identifier


Ticket ID


By default, when a ticket is created in your portal, a ticket ID will be generated. All the corresponding ticket notifications and updates between the customer and agent will have the ticket ID in the subject line in the format [#{{ticket.id}}]. 

For this reason, it is always recommended to configure the Email subject line with the ticket ID in the above format. This can be done from under Admin > Workflows > Email notifications > Templates > Agent reply template.  


When the customer or agent replies to the ticket notifications, Freshdesk checks if the ticket ID matches and threads the email to the existing ticket accordingly. Additionally, you can configure a unique threading identifier and add it to all the outgoing templates to ensure the ticket replies are accurately threaded. For example, you can configure the ticket ID prefix, add it to your agent reply template, and send out emails to the requestor. For instructions on configuring ticket ID prefix, refer to Configuring Advanced Email Settings.


Message-ID


Every email has a unique identifier assigned by the email provider called Message ID. You can find the Message ID in the 'In-Reply-To' or 'References' section of the Original email, using which a reply gets threaded to the original email. Freshdesk uses the same method to thread replies to tickets.


Note: The Message ID usually expires seven days after the last response on the ticket. This means if there are no agent-customer conversations on a ticket for more than seven days, the Message ID automatically expires. In this case, after seven days, if there is a reply on the ticket, the threading logic looks for the Ticket ID or the Ticket Identifier in order to thread the reply to a ticket. If no matches are found, a new ticket will be created even if it is a reply to an existing ticket.


Ticket Identifier


In addition to the message ID, Freshdesk also has a unique identifier for every email notification sent. This is done using a hidden div tag in the email. If the tag is present, the email will be threaded correctly. For example, if the customer uses plaintext mode to reply, the ticket identifier will not work.


Email ticket threading also works when two different businesses use Freshdesk. Specifically, each Freshdesk account will add an identifier as part of the email message in the hidden div tag so that ticket threading works in Reply and Forward scenarios.


Note: Helpdesk address recipient check

  1. If you configure two email addresses in Freshdesk and receive an email with both these addresses in the same email, two separate tickets will be created. For example, if you have support@abc.com and billing@abc.com, and the customer sends an email to both these addresses in the same mail, the ticket will not be merged instead, two separate tickets will be created. 
  2. Also in the middle of a ticket conversation, if the customer replies adding another support address, then that reply will be created as a separate ticket and also be displayed as a reply in the current ticket.

Requester Checks

Once an email is identified as a response to an existing ticket, Freshdesk checks if the sender's email satisfies one of the following conditions:

Sender's email address is:

  • Requester email address of the ticket

  • Agent email address of the ticket

  • Email address(es) in the CC of the ticket

  • Email address(es) to which the ticket was forwarded

Only when an email reply satisfies one of the Email Marker Checks and one of the Requester Checks Freshdesk appends the email response to an existing ticket.

Tips and best practices


To ensure that ticket replies are properly threaded and no duplicate tickets are created, ensure that you accurately configure the advanced email settings:

  • If you do not want to create a new ticket for each customer response, make sure to disable this setting.

  • It is recommended to ensure that the requester check option is disabled.

  • Additionally, also ensure to disable the “Create a new ticket when subject line changes”.

For more details, check Configuring advanced Email settings.