Email is considered to be one of the main support channels, so it should be a primary setting you should work on when UseResponse instance is going live.
Understanding of Mailing in UseResponse
Mailboxes are used for creating tickets, all notifications in the system and posting replies to tickets/topics.
Here is a typical workflow that best describes how it works:
- Your customer sends an email to the default mailbox that is set up in UseResponse;
- System checks if it's a new request or a reply to the current ticket/topic;
- If the request is new, it goes to ticket rules and it either creates tickets, sends a notification to required agents or drops it depending on the rules;
- When an agent or customer reply to email notification, new comment within ticket/topic is created.
Your instance should have only 1 default support email. All other emails would be just forwarders to the main mailbox. Cloud users have it by default. UseResponse Self-Hosted instances would need your efforts to add an incoming mailbox.
There are some rules to follow in order for the system to work correctly:
- Outgoing/Incoming mailboxes should be the same in order for the system to convert them into tickets or replies;
- You should have 1 default mailbox used for outgoing/incoming emails, and add other mailboxes as forwarders to the default support mailbox;
- Additional mailboxes that are used for forwarding shouldn't be used as user accounts in the system.
Notifications & Personalized Replies
By default, the system would use the name of the default mailbox for all outgoing system messages for topics. For tickets, it would use Agent Name as "Reply From" that posts a reply. If you want all ticket notifications to be sent from the name of default mailbox, please go to Administration » Support Channels » Help Desk and change notification setting.
Setup Custom Mailbox
There is also an option to send personalized notifications from custom mailboxes that are added as forwarders in the system. In order to accomplish it, you need to set up forwarding, then verify custom mailbox in the system as an additional mailbox, make it default and Add an SPF record to your DNS settings.
For example, a customer emailed you on the incoming mailbox that is set up as a forwarder in the system. Once the agent replies to a created ticket, notification would be sent by the default mailbox but within headers, a user would see "From Name", "Email" and "Reply-To" of the additional mailbox.
So in general, you have 3 options of personalized emails:
- Add domains in the cloud such as [any]@[account].useresponse.com and set up rules for automation for it (for example, on [email protected] only financial manager as your agent would receive notifications);
- Add your custom domains with SPF record and make it default, so all outgoing/incoming emails would go from it;
- Use standard support email provided by our service or set up in the cloud and use it for all incoming messages, but in tickets, all notifications would be from the name of the agent that replies.
Mailboxes in Cloud Instance
Cloud users have the default support address provided by our service in the format of [email protected]. Though, any of the emails before @ could be used to receive requests in the system. For example, sales@, billing@, help@, etc.
Different support addresses are useful to setup automation and trigger specific actions depending on the mailbox the request was sent to. Please make sure to add them as mailboxes in your system.
Management of Mailboxes
In order to manage the mailbox, please go to Administration » Support Channels » Email. Cloud users have default mailbox setup for outgoing/incoming messages. Users with the self-hosted package will have only outgoing mailbox with email stated while installation.
In order to add a new mailbox/forwarder, click New Mailbox and enter the email and "From Name" that would be used as "Reply-To".
Then the system would ask you to verify the forwarder. Please set up forwarding before proceeding, so that all incoming messages would be automatically forwarded to default support email.
Once forwarding is setup, you can click the Verify button for the system to make sure it's working properly.
Note
If you don't have incoming mailbox setup in the system, you won't have the option to add new mailboxes. Make sure to forward emails, not redirect messages.
Microsoft Exchange Server: you need to set up the redirect rule to preserve the original sender and email instead of the forwarding rule.
In case there is more than one forum in the system, you can use every additional mailbox for a specific community. For example, you provide multilingual support to your customers and assign English mailbox for the English community, German one - for the German community, etc. So the system would send email notifications to users in the language of their community.
Emails with SMTP & POP/IMAP
In self-hosted package, UseResponse uses PHP to send all outgoing email notifications. In order to change the default outgoing/incoming mailbox, please go to Administration » Support Channels » Email and click edit next to the default mailbox and change email and name. The name would be used as "From Name" and "Reply-To" in outgoing notifications.
Both Cloud and Self-Hosted packages has an option to set up SMTP server as outgoing mailbox and POP/IMAP server as the incoming mailbox. We highly recommend using external servers to guarantee email delivery.
Additional mailboxes should also be added as forwarders to default support mailbox.