Forwarding your Support Emails to Zoho Desk

Forwarding your Support Emails to Zoho Desk

Create support tickets in Zoho Desk by forwarding the emails received at your external email address. You must configure a forwarding rule (in your email client) to route the emails received in your mail client to an equivalent email address in Zoho Desk. Take a look at the below illustration:

Support Email Address
Equivalent Zoho Desk Alias
support@mycompany.com
support@mycompany.zohodesk.com
sales@mycompany.com
sales@mycompany.zohodesk.com
escalation@mycompany.com
escalation@mycompany.zohodesk.com
billing@mycompany.com
billing@mycompany.zohodesk.com

When your customers send an email to support@mycompany.com, it will be forwarded to its equivalent support email address in Zoho Desk. i.e, support@mycompany.zohodesk.com.

Configuring a Forwarding Rule
The steps to configure a forwarding rule will vary from one email client to another. Let us look at the steps involved for a few email providers below:

Zoho Mail
You can configure Zoho Mail to automatically forward emails to your help desk as and when they are received. While doing so, you can choose to retain a copy of the emails in your Zoho Mail mailbox.

To forward emails from Zoho Mail:
  1. Log in to Zoho Mail account with administrator credentials.
  2. Click the Settings icon (  ) in the upper right area.
  3. Click Email Forwarding under Mail Accounts on the Settings page.
  4. Enter the Zoho Desk support email address and hit Enter. (i.e: support@mycompany.zohodesk.com).
  5. Zoho Mail will send a verification email to your support email address.
    You can find this email created as a ticket under the [Open Tickets] View in Zoho Desk. 
  6. Open the ticket to complete the verification process. 
That is it! You can send an email to your Zoho Mail mailbox to see them forwarded to Zoho Desk.


Outlook Connected to an Exchange Server



You must set up a redirect rule to forward your support emails to Zoho Desk when you're using Outlook connected to an Exchange server. If you're using Outlook 2007, follow the steps mentioned here. 

Alternatively, you can follow the steps below to forward emails to a mail-enabled contact:
  1. Create a Contact in Active Directory (Microsoft's Directory Server) called Zoho Desk Support with the email address support@mydomain.zohodesk.com. (where mydomain refers to your domain)
  2. Activate mail forwarding on support@mycompany.com under user properties in the Active Directory.
For more information about forwarding emails to a mail-enabled contact, click here.

Another way to set up forwarding is by creating a contact, but without creating an Exchange mailbox or configuring the Outlook client to forward.
To forward emails from Active Directory:
  1. Create a Contact in Active Directory (Microsoft's Directory Server) called Zoho Desk Support with the email address support@mydomain.zohodesk.com.
  2. Create a new Global Distribution Group with one of your local email address, say helpdesk@mydomain.com.
  3. Make the Zoho Desk Support contact a member of the new Global Distribution Group.
The emails sent to helpdesk@mydomain.com will now be forwarded to support@mydomain.zohodesk.com

Office 365 Hosted Exchange
You can forward emails to Zoho Desk if you're using an Office 365 hosted exchange for your business.



To configure forwarding in Office 365:
  1. Log in to Microsoft Office 365 account with administrator credentials.
  2. Create your support mailbox for Office 365. If you have already created one, you can ignore this step.
  3. Go to Options >> See all Options from the upper right area.
  4. In the following screen, click Manage Myself and choose My Organization.
  5. In the Manage My Organization view, click External Contacts.
    This contact will relay emails from your organization to Zoho Desk.
  6. Provide the external email address as support@mycompany.zohodesk.com and click Save.
  7. Click Manage menu and select Another User to create a new rule for emails arriving in your mailbox.
  8. In the pop-up window, double click your support mailbox.
  9. In the following window, select Organize Email from the options on your left.
  10. In the Inbox Rules tab, click New to create a new rule.
  11. Select [Apply to all messages].
  12. Under Do the following, select [Redirect the message to].
  13. In the Address Book view, select the email address you want your emails to be forwarded to. (i.e: support@mycompany.zohodesk.com).
  14. Click OK to save your settings.
  15. In the New Inbox Rule page, enter a name for the rule.
  16. Click Save and then click Yes to apply the rule to all future messages.
That is it! You can send an email to your support mailbox to see them forwarded to Zoho Desk.

Google Mail aka Gmail
Receive support emails at Gmail and forward them to your Zoho Desk account automatically. You must configure a forwarding rule under the Settings section of your Google Mail console. 




To forward emails to Zoho Desk using Gmail:
  1. Log in to Gmail account that you want to forward from.
  2. Click the Gear icon (  ) in the upper right area and select Settings.
  3. Click the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab.
  4. In the Forwarding section, select Add a Forwarding Address.
  5. Enter the Zoho Desk support email address. (i.e: support@mycompany.zohodesk.com).
  6. In the confirmation pop-up window, click Proceed.
    Gmail will send a verification email to your support email address.
  7. Log in to your Zoho Desk account and click the Open Tickets View.
    You should see a ticket with Gmail Forwarding Confirmation in the subject line.
  8. Open the ticket and copy the Confirmation code.
  9. Go back to your Gmail account and paste the code in the new box under Forwarding:
  10. Click Verify.
  11. Click the new option, and check that Forward a copy of incoming mail is selected.
  12. Click Save Changes.

G Suite Email Group
You can configure email routing for your domain if you're a customer of G Suite for Business. Follow the steps below to configure mail routing or click here for more instruction from Google.
  1. Sign in to the Google Admin Console.
  2. Click Apps, then click G Suite >> Gmail.
  3. Click Default Routing, to add a new route.
  4. Click Add Setting.
  5. From the drop-down list, specify Single Recipient and enter your support email address (i.e., support@mycompany.com).
  6. In the [If the envelope recipient matches the above] section, select Modify Message from the drop-down list.
  7. Check the Add custom headers option.
  8. Click Add and enter a custom header for X-Orig-To (i.e., support@mycompany.com).
    This way, your agents can know that an email was routed.
  9. Check the Change envelope recipient option.
  10. Enter the Zoho Desk email address in the Replace recipient field (i.e., support@mycompany.zohodesk.com).
  11. In the [Options] section, select Perform this action on non-recognized and recognized addresses.
  12. Click Save.
You can repeat the above steps to add your other email addresses.

Yahoo! Mail
If you're using Yahoo! Mail, follow the steps mentioned here to forward the e-mails received. Once you set up forwarding, you will receive a verification email at the support email address configured in Yahoo! Mail. You can find this email created as a ticket under the [Open Tickets] View in Zoho Desk. Open the ticket to complete the verification process in Yahoo! Mail.