Under Tickets > Email Accounts, you can configure the email accounts that will be used to accept Tickets and send out email notifications.

Any new message to one of these accounts is automatically converted to a Ticket within your helpdesk. If the message is part of an ongoing conversation (i.e. it is in response to a message about an existing Ticket), it will be shown as a reply in the Agent interface.

A Ticket email account can’t also be used for a Deskpro User/Agent account. This is necessary to prevent email loops, where Deskpro could end up replying to its own emails endlessly. It’s best to add Agents using individual email accounts (e.g. john.smith@yourcompany.com), rather than with user-facing addresses like support@.

Custom Email Address Configuration

Deskpro Cloud offers cloud-hosted email accounts with addresses ending @yourcompany.deskpro.com. By default, you will have a contact@ account linked to the Support Department; you can edit this or add more accounts.

You could ask Users to submit Tickets to these deskpro.com accounts, but you would probably prefer to use your existing support addresses, like help@yourcompany.com.

You can configure Deskpro to use an address like this (a custom email address). Users will only see the custom email address you set up: e.g. they would send email to help@yourcompany.com, and receive email from help@yourcompany.com, without ever seeing the @yourcompany.deskpro.com address.

To set up a custom email address:

1. In Tickets > Email Accounts, select or create the Cloud account you want to use and check Use a custom email address. Enter the custom address you want to use.

1. Configure your email system to forward all mail sent to the custom address to the Deskpro Cloud account: e.g. forward from contact@yourcompany.com to contact@yourcompany.deskpro.com. Consult the documentation for the email system you use (e.g. Exchange, Gmail) to find out how to do this.

2. Set up how outgoing email will be sent; i.e. mail from the custom address. There are three options:

   • Send mail through Deskpro: sends email from our cloud servers; you will need to make some DNS changes to ensure email isn’t marked as spam. See the section  Email Handling Optionsfor details.

   • SMTP sends email using your SMTP server.

     You will need to provide some SMTP settings:

     

     If you don’t know these, you will probably be able to find them by looking at the settings of your email client.

   • Gmail or Google Apps: If you have 2-step verification enabled on the Google account, create an application-specific password and enter that.

     Otherwise, you may need to go to https://www.google.com/settings/security/lesssecureapps(while logged into the Google account) and select the “Less Secure Apps” option.  ( See this article for details).

Default account for non-ticket email

Some of the emails that Deskpro sends are non-Ticket related email such as password reset links, welcome emails, or login alerts. You can specify which account is used to send these in Admin > Settings in the Default Email Account section.

If you don’t want a Ticket to be created when a User replies to a non-Ticket email like a password reset message, you may want to create a separate “no-reply” email account and set that as the default email account.

Sending Email Using Deskpro Cloud Servers

If you use a custom email address and you want to send outgoing email from the Deskpro servers, it’s important that you take some additional steps to avoid your helpdesk email messages being wrongly flagged as spam.

Internet providers use anti-spam systems called SPF and DKIM, which compare the server that sends a message to the From: address. You need to modify your DNS to indicate that Deskpro’s email delivery provider (SendGrid) is authorized to send email on your behalf.

Make the following changes to the DNS record of your domain, replacing yourcompany.com with your actual domain:

1. Create a CNAME for dpmail.yourcompany.com to sendgrid.net, for example: dpmail.yourcompany.com CNAME sendgrid.net.

2. Add a DNS TXT record for SPF, or modify your existing SPF TXT record, to whitelist SendGrid as a server allowed to send mail from your domain. Consult this SPF Record Syntax guide for full details. Here are some examples:

   • Basic example: v=spf1 a mx include:sendgrid.net ~all - doesn’t whitelist a particular server, just means all servers are considered neutral (neither spam nor not spam)

   • If you use Google Apps for email: v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.google.com include:sendgrid.net ~all

   • To whitelist an SMTP server: v=spf1 a mx include:smtp.yourcompany.com include:sendgrid.net ~all

3. Create the following CNAME records for DKIM:

   • smtpapi._domainkey.example.com CNAME dkim.sendgrid.net.

   • smtpapi._domainkey.dpmail.example.com CNAME dkim.sendgrid.net.

If you don’t know how to change your DNS configuration or don’t have the right access to do so, consider using a different Outgoing Email setting.

If your company doesn’t have an SMTP server, an easy alternative is to set up a Gmail or Google Apps email account that is only for helpdesk messages.