Forwarding Emails - Zoho Desk Knowledgebase

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.

Availability
Info Permission
Users with the Support Administrator permission profile can set up email forwarding.
Check Feature Availability and Limits

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. 


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. Note, you must be an Exchange administrator or Global administrator in Microsoft 365 to configure email forwarding.

To configure forwarding in Office 365
  1. Log in to your Microsoft Office 365 account with administrator credentials.
  2. Go to Users > Active Users in the admin center.
    Choose the desired user name and open the properties page.
  3. Select Manage email forwarding under the Mail tab.
  4. Select Forward all emails sent to this mailbox.
    Enter the Zoho Desk support email address (i.e support@mycompany.zohodesk.com) and choose whether to keep a copy of forwarded emails. If this option is not visible, make sure a license is assigned to your user account.
  5. Select Save changes.
To configure forwarding to multiple email addresses
  1. Go to Outlook > Home > Rules.
  2. Select Manage Rules & Alerts.
  3. Select New Rule and choose Apply rule on message I receive and click Next.
  4. Click Yes when asked 'This rule will be applied to every message you receive'.
  5. On the next list, select the actions, redirect it to people or public groups and stop processing more rules.
  6. Click the people or public group at the bottom of the page.
  7. Type the email address in the To field and click OK.
  8. Select Finish.
InfoSee also, Configuring email forwarding in Microsoft 365 help article for more details.

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.

Google workspace email group

You can configure email routing for your domain if you're a customer of Google Workspace 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 Google Workspace >> Gmail.
  3. Click Default Routing, to add a new route.
  4. Click Configure or Add Another Rule.
  5. Click Add Setting.
  6. From the drop-down list, specify Single Recipient and enter your support email address (i.e., support@mycompany.com).
  7. In the [If the envelope recipient matches the above] section, select Modify Message from the drop-down list.
  8. Check the Add custom headers option.
  9. 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.
  10. Check the Change envelope recipient option.
  11. Enter the Zoho Desk email address in the Replace recipient field (i.e., support@mycompany.zohodesk.com).
  12. In the [Options] section, select Perform this action on non-recognized and recognized addresses.
  13. 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.
Notes
Note: You must have subscribed to Yahoo! Mail Plus to configure email forwarding to Zoho Desk.

Info
SEE ALSO
Setting up your Email Channel
Configuring SPF and DKIM for your Email Domain