In the real world, a scenario of issue free systems does not exist, yet. Nevertheless, we could avoid glitches by learning from our experiences. So right from the Freshdesk arsenal, here’s a listing of some frequent oversights that we see our customers running into. Make note and correct them if you’ve found yourself in such sticky situations. Being proactive can help avoid those small & big problems that could damage your company’s good name.

IMPORTANT

At any point of setting up your support mailbox, one very important check is to make sure that you haven’t configured an agent email address to be your support email. As Freshdesk uses the email address for login credentials and this would trigger the event to run into an infinite loop, leaving you wondering why aren’t you able to login to your Helpdesk!

Also, if you come across Freshdesk blocking you from adding a new agent saying that the “email address is already taken”, this is probably because the specified agent email address already exists as a Contact in your Customer list. This being the result of the agent having sent in a test email to Freshdesk earlier and the address automatically added to contact list.

#1 “My emails aren’t getting delivered to the recipient mailbox! The emails bounce or just get tagged as spam!”

This is because SPF and/or DKIM authentications are operational at the receiving mailbox. Messages that do not indicate compliance with these protection mechanisms get ‘rejected’ or tagged as ‘junk’. To avoid undelivered support emails, configure required settings in Freshdesk indicating to the receiving email server that your support email complies by the prescribed authentication and that the email is legitimate.

SPF & DKIM records must be published in the DNS as text (TXT) resource records (RR) declaring what an email receiver should do with non-aligned mail it receives. To enable this for your support email, create records for Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and/or DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) with your domain name registrar. Your DNS service provider would give you access to edit the same or, if your company has its own DNS server, then specify record details there. Note that your support email configuration is not complete without this.  

#2 “I’ve set up multiple support addresses and yet, all replies seem to go out from the same email address”

This is because you would have mentioned the same forwarding detail for all your mailboxes. In a multiple email setup, make sure you provide the corresponding forwarding detail while configuring the forwarding rule for each of the email addresses. i.e. for every new email you add, Freshdesk gives you a different forwarding address, enter this under settings for each of the mailboxes and you are good to go!

#3 “While configuring a custom mailbox, I’m unable to save the configuration.”

Check if all port settings are correct. Following are the port numbers for IMAP & SMTP email protocols.

You will come across this if you have any public mail service or private SMTP and IMAP servers configured for your incoming/outgoing emails. In addition, ensure that you have chosen the authentication or login type i.e. Plain/Secure Logins.  For example, Gmail uses plain or CRAM-MD5 authentication. Choosing a wrong authentication method will lead to an error while saving.

#4 “We use a custom ticket form and my agents are not able to create a ticket in the customer's name.”

To be rid of this issue, configure your custom form to make the ‘from’ email "noreply@<yourdomain>.com". Then, add the customer's email address in the 'reply to' address field every time you create a ticket as an agent.

#5 “Some Agents aren’t receiving email notifications for certain tickets.”

This is mostly because users forget to mention the agent name while configuring new ticket creation notifications. Verify if you have mentioned the specified agent name in the ‘New Ticket Created’ notification rule. You can find this under Admin-->Email Notifications

-->Agent Notification--> New Ticket Created. Click on ‘Edit’ and add the agent name against ‘Notify Agents:’ before you hit ‘Save’.

Also, check if you have removed sample entries of the virtual email addresses that appear by default in Freshdesk. Replace this by configuring your company’s email domain settings.