Helpdesk Email Settings

Incoming Email handler settings

The incoming mail handler periodically checks given mailboxes every 1-5 minutes and generates tickets from incoming emails. The emails are then removed from the mailserver.

• Accept emails from unregistered users - when ON, HelpDesk will convert ALL incoming emails into new tickets. If an email-address is not present in the system yet, HelpDesk will create a new user with a new password. The user can later retrieve his password via the "forgot password" link.
• New tickets go the default category - default category for new tickets, generated from emails
• Add all emails from CC and TO fields - to ticket-subscribers - by default Helpdesk will add all recipients from TO and CC fields to ticket subscribers. Subscribers will receive all updates from that ticket. If this settings is off, only the original ticket sender will be added to subscribers.
• Extract the original sender from forwarded emails - You can forward any email to your support mailbox and Helpdesk will try to extract the original sender and create a ticket on his behalf. This is very useful when someone sends an email to your personal mailbox, instead of the support address.
  
  Make sure that:
  
  Your email (the one that will send the forward) is registered in the helpdesk app and its user-account is assigned the "technician" role
  The email has a "Fwd:" or "Fw:" in the subject line, so the app detect a forward and tries to extract the original sender.
  

The incoming email module works like this:

• The helpdesk software checks a given mail account(s) every five minutes. The "hosted" version also imports email from the default support mailbox we provided you with.
• When an email is detected - it adds a ticket to the helpdesk (or adds a comment to an existing ticket) and removes the message from the server
• NOTE 1 If there's been 5 (five) errors in a row connecting to the server, helpdesk might "disable" the email account temporarily, to enable it back go to "Administrator - Email settings - Incoming email accounts".
• NOTE 2 If one or more CC addresses are found in the incoming email, the CC-users are added to a newly created tickets (this works for NEW messages, not emails to existing tickets)
• NOTE 3 The helpdesk app has a built-in junk email filter that filters bounce-emails - "non-delivered" reports, errors, "out of office" emails and messages coming from addresses like "postmaster@", "noreply@" etc.

Notifications

• Email notifications enabled - when this option is on, Isimsoftware HelpDesk will notify users when their tickets are updated, notify the help-desk team of the new tickets and new updates on the existing tickets.
• "Ticket closed" notification - when this option is on, ticket submitters will get notifications when their tickets are closed.
• Ticket confirmation notification - when this option is on, ticket submitters will get email notifications when their ticket is created in the help desk. They will only get this notification, if they submit the ticket via email, not via the web-interface.
• Notify all administrators of new tickets - notifies helpdesk administrators about all created tickets in every category.
• Notify technicians of new tickets in their categories - technicians will get notifications about the new tickets created in the categories they have access to. When a ticket is MOVED to a new category - this will also generate a notification to those technicians who haven't seen it in the old category.
• Notify ALL technicians in a category when a customer updates a ticket - sends a notification to all technicians when a customer updates a ticket in their categories. No matter if techs are assigned to the ticket or not.
• Notify ALL technicians in a category when another technician TAKES a ticket - notifies other technicians when someone takes over a ticket in their categories to prevent collisions.
• Notify ALL technicians in a category when a KB article is updated - notifies other technicians when another technician or administrator updates a KB article in the technician's category.
• Include any attachments into outgoing notifications - if you want to remove the files attached to a ticket from email notifications (for instance, for HIPAA compliance) - uncheck this box. This will also disable access to inline images attached to tickets from within email software.
• Send autologin links in outgoing notifications - by default we send "autologin" links - links users can click and login instantly without the need to enter a password - to ticket submitters in outgoing notifications. We send them only to regular users, not to techs or admins. These links are also time-limited to three days.
  
  This is very convenient, but can be a potential security breach. When a users forwards his helpdesk notification to someone else, the recipient of the forwarded email can click the autologin link to login under the original user credentials.
• Send ticket updates to all subscribers in CC instead of an individual email to every subscriber - By default, when someone updates a ticket, HelpDesk sends an individual email to every ticket subscriber. This is the recommended option. Check this box to send one email to all ticket subscribers in CC/TO (warning: this might cause some confusion when people will "reply to all").
  
  NOTE: enabling this feature will disable "autologin" links in outgoing emails to customers, everyone will get the same regular link to the ticket. It will also disable "#RatingLinks#" mask in email template.

Outgoing email settings

• "From" email-address - the email notifications will be sent from this address.
• "From" name - the name, like "Acme Support", used for "system" email notifications, (like "your ticket has been received" etc.) except for human-originated replies (in this case, from "From" name will be the name of the user or technician who wrote the message).
• "Reply-to" address for notifications - all emails sent by the application will have this reply-to address. It is strongly recommended to set this address to the one that the incoming-email-checker checks. So your users replies would go back to the helpdesk.
• Use 'From Name' for ALL outgoing notifications - When checked, all outgoing email notifications will have "From name", both system messages and relies from humans.
• SMTP server address - Isimsoftware HelpDesk uses standard SMTP protocol to send messages. Specify your SMTP-server address.
• SMTP server port - Specify your SMTP-server port.
• SMTP server requires authentication - if your SMTP-server requires authentication, turn this option on and specify username/password for your SMTP-server.
• Use SSL to connect to the SMTP server - if a server requires a secure connection

Email templates

• Email Template - these are the emails sent to users (and "technicians") when something happens in the app. Like someone replies to a ticket, or a new ticket arrives. Here's where you edit those emails.

  You can use rich formatting (bold, italic, coloring, font-size etc), also click the "</>" button to switch to "code" view.

  Possible substitution-masks are:

  • #What_Happened# - is replaced with the main notification text. i.g. "The ticket has been closed" or "The ticket has been updated - [reply text]" etc. etc.
  • #What_Happened_Short# - Same as #What_Happened#, but truncated to 100 symbols.
  • #Category# - is replaced with the ticket category
  • #Subject# - is replaced with the ticket subject
  • #From# - who has submitted the ticket (full name if specified, otherwise - username)
  • #FromEmail# - who has submitted the ticket
  • #FirstName# - who has submitted the ticket (if specified)
  • #LastName# - who has submitted the ticket (if specified)
  • #Originator# - person that performed the action (added a comment or closed the ticket etc.)
  • #Priority# - ticket priority
  • #Status# - ticket status
  • #Body# - ticket body
  • #URL# - is replaced with a link to the ticket
  • #Recipients# - is replaced with recipients list (email addresses) for the reply being added
  • #Recent_messages# - 5 most recent entries from the ticket log (5 most recent replies)
  • #XRecent_messages# - X most recent entries, where X is a number. E.g. #10Recent_messages"
  • #Most_recent_message# - the one most recent entry from the ticket log (latest reply)
  • #Custom_Fields# - custom fields in the ticket. You can also add individual custom fields by their ID's, using the #CF_1234# mask,where "1234" is the ID.
  • #Company# - name of the ticket originator's company
  • #Department# - name of the ticket originator's department
  • #Location# - name of the ticket originator's location
  • #Attachments# - outputs a list of all ticket attachments with download links
  • #TicketID# - outputs the ticket's unique ID-number in the helpdesk system
  • #Technician# - the agent assigned to the ticket ("technician")
  • #TechnicianEmail# - the email of the agent assigned to the ticket
  • #Date# - the ticket date - when it has been submitted
  • #DueDate# - the ticket due date - if set
  • #TimeSpent# - time spent on the ticket by technicians
  • #Recent_Attachments# - outputs a list of attachments from the last reply (warning: this mask works only if the notification is a "new ticket" or a "ticket updated" notification)
  • #Suggested_KB_articles# - shows a list of links to Knowledge Base articles that are similar to the ticket (empty if no similar articles were found)
  • #Subscribers# - replaced with a list of the ticket's subscribers (usernames)
  • #NonTechSubscribers# - replaced with a list of the ticket's subscribers, but only those who are not admins or technicians.
  • #RatingLinks# - replaced with customer satisfaction feedback prompt "PLease rate your experience" and 3 links "Good/OK/Bad". NOTE: this mask works only in "Ticket Closed" emails and to ticket creator, other subscribers won't receive it. Thus, if ytou have "Send uptades to all; aubscribers in CC" - this mask wont work too.

  For the "welcome email" you can use these masks:

  • #username
  • #password
  • #URL
  • Other masks are not supported for this type of email

  Email-templates support limited html

Email API

You can send instructions to the help desk by including specific text in your email subject.

• Your reply will be marked "for techs only" if you add "#tech#" to the subject line.
• You can close a ticket if you add "#close#" to the subject line
• You can "unsubscribe" from a ticket if you add "#unsubscribe#" or "#unsub#" to the subject line

SPF-records (hosted version only)

If you're on our hosted version, you're using "Isimsoftware's SMTP server" and customers report that helpdesk emails are being detected as "spam" - you might want to add an SPF record to your DNS to prevent false-positive spam detection for outgoing emails. Add the following TXT record to your DNS server:

domain.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 a:hmail.isimsoftware.com ~all"

Where "domain.com" should be replaced by your domain, that is being user in the "from" address

← help contents | Helpdesk website