Receiving requests by email

If your customers prefer to open and work on requests from the comfort of their email inboxes, you can enable email requests to receive all customer requests in Jira Service Desk. Enabling email requests will help your team focus on your customers, instead of having to worry about missing requests or checking multiple inboxes. 

Here's how it works:

  • A customer emails a request to your linked service desk account
  • An agent comments on the request in service desk, which sends the customer an email notification.
  • The customer replies to these email notifications until the request is resolved. All customer replies are automatically added as comments on the corresponding issue in service desk. 

On this page:

Before you start

  • Make sure you have the Administer Projects permission.
  • Enable public signup or manually add customers to your service desk project to ensure that you receive new customer requests.
  • Set up a suitable request type with Summary and Description as required visible fields. Any other fields must be optional.
  • Know which emails from your mail client will be processed.

Adding an email account

Open your service desk project and proceed to Project administration > Email settings. Turn on email requests by selecting the Turn it on button. Easy enough.Select Add email account. Choose your email service provider and enter the requested details before selecting Next

If you have two-step verification enabled for your Gmail account, you will need to set up an application-specific password.

Choosing a request type

When a customer emails your service desk, a corresponding request will be created with the following two fields:

  • Summary (from the email subject line)
  • Description (from the email content)

In order to use the email channel, you therefore need to have at least one request type in your project with the Summary and Description fields – we call these types of requests "suitable for emails". Associating email requests with a suitable service desk request type ensures that the emails are successfully filtered into your service desk queues. In this example, we have one suitable request type ("Get help"):

Select a suitable request type for your email channel and select Done.

Verifying your linked email account

Once you have chosen a suitable request type, Jira Service Desk will send a test email and create a corresponding test request in your service desk project. Head on over to the Queues tab to find the new request:

 

New messages sent to your linked email account will now appear as service desk requests in your project. For more information about what emails are processed by Jira Service Desk, expand the option that applies to you: 

Emails using POP

Jira Service Desk looks for messages in your inbox that have...
  1. The "Deleted" flag set to false, and
  2. Been received after your email account and service desk project have been successfully linked.

To link your email account with a service desk using POP, make sure that your email inbox is empty by moving the existing messages to another folder, archiving them, or deleting them. Starting with an empty inbox ensures that you do not lose emails unintentionally, as POP emails are deleted after they are processed by Jira Service Desk.

Emails using IMAP

Jira Service Desk looks for messages in your inbox that have...
  1.  The "Deleted" and "Seen" flags set to false, and
  2. Been received after your email account and service desk project have been successfully linked.

If you use IMAP, emails are marked as read (not deleted) after they are processed by Jira Service Desk. If you want existing messages to be pulled in by Jira Service Desk, you can move them back to your inbox and mark them as unread after the connection has been established.

Preparing customers for email greatness

Before sharing your linked email account with your customers, you will want to confirm whether you have an open or restricted service desk. New customer email requests can bounce if you have a restricted service desk, and that's no fun. Expand the statement that applies to you below to make sure your customers are ready to use your new email channel:

I have an open service desk...

Great! New customers can create requests right away by emailing your linked service desk email account. A corresponding customer account will be created based on the new customer's email address. Customer accounts do not count towards your service desk license.

I have a restricted service desk...

Email requests will not be processed if your customers don't have existing service desk accounts. Simply create new customer accounts (or send customer invitations) before telling new customers to email your service desk.

 

Email usage notes

  • Note that you can only link one email account to your service desk project.If you use more than one email address to interact with your customers, you might be able to set up forwarding rules or aliases to receive requests in the email linked to your service desk project. You will need to configure any forwarding rules or aliases in your email client.

  • If you are a Jira Administrator, you can refer to Managing the email channel to learn more about global mail settings.
  • If you encountered any issues during the email setup process, check out some common errors and resolutions here.

 

Last modified on Mar 12, 2018

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