Every company gets its own help desk address. Email sent to it becomes a ticket, and a reply to help desk mail is added to its ticket. Forward your own help desk mailbox to it, so requesters keep writing to the address they already know.

Overview

The help desk address

The Help desk address card on Help desk settings shows your address: ten random letters and digits at help.tekstacks.com, such as [email protected]. Click Copy to copy it. The address is random so nobody can guess it, and it never changes.

If your company manages clients, each client also has its own address, listed under Client addresses. Mail to a client's address opens its ticket in that client.

What happens to a message

• A new message opens a ticket. The subject becomes the ticket's subject and the message its first entry. If the sender's address matches a current employee, that employee is the requester.
• Everyone on the Cc line of a message that opens a ticket becomes a subscriber, including people outside your company, so they get its replies and its close note and their own replies join it. The sender and your help desk addresses are left out, and at most 20 are added; a private note on the ticket says how many more were not. Cc on a later reply adds nobody; add a subscriber by hand instead.
• A ticket that comes by email has no equipment on it. Add it with Edit ticket. See Change the requester or the equipment.
• Replies thread into their ticket. Every message TekStacks sends carries the ticket's reference in its subject, such as [IT-1042], and in its mail headers. A reply finds its ticket by either one. It is added to that ticket only when it comes from the ticket's requester or a subscriber; from anyone else, it opens a new ticket.
• A reply to a ticket that was merged goes to the ticket it was merged into.
• A reply to a closed ticket does what When someone emails a reply to a closed ticket says. See Replies to closed tickets.
• The same message received twice is added once.

Auto replies, out of office and bounces are dropped

Mail no person wrote never becomes a ticket or a reply: auto replies, out of office replies, bounces and delivery reports, and mail from mailing lists. Mail from any help.tekstacks.com address or from your own sending address is dropped too. This keeps your help desk and another system's auto reply from answering each other forever. Nobody is told the message was dropped.

The per sender limit

One sender can send your company 30 messages an hour. Anything more from them in that hour is dropped, and nobody is told. A real back and forth on a ticket stays well under the limit; a loop or a flood does not.

Attachments

Files attached to a message are saved on the ticket, up to 10 MB each and 25 MB for one message, within your company's help desk storage. The Help desk storage line on Help desk settings shows how much is used.

When the files do not fit, the message is still added, without them, and a private note on the ticket says "Attachments not saved:" with their names. Ask the requester to send them another way.

Unmatched senders

A message from an address that matches no employee, or no client contact if your company manages clients, still opens a ticket. The ticket shows an Unmatched sender warning with the address it came from, and the sender is not sent the usual acknowledgment yet. There are three ways out:

• Link the sender to an employee, or to a client's contact if your company manages clients. They become the requester and are sent the acknowledgment they did not get.
• Add them as an employee from the ticket. They become the requester, are sent the acknowledgment, and their next messages match on their own.
• Close the ticket, when the message needs no answer.

Requirements

• The help desk turned on for your company. See Getting the help desk.
• To see the help desk address: Manage ticket statuses, priorities, categories, the number prefix and the sending address.
• To link a sender or close a ticket: Reply, add notes, assign and change tickets.
• To add a sender as an employee: Reply, add notes, assign and change tickets and Add, edit, import and mark employees as left (never delete).
• To set up forwarding: admin access to your Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace.

Find your help desk address

1. In the sidebar, open Administration, then Help desk.
2. On the Help desk address card, click Copy.

Forward a Microsoft 365 mailbox

Use a shared mailbox for your help desk, such as [email protected], so nobody needs a license for it.

1. In the Microsoft 365 admin center, open the shared mailbox and its email forwarding setting.
2. Turn on forwarding of all email sent to the mailbox, and enter your help desk address. Keep a copy in the mailbox if you want one.
3. Save.

Instead of mailbox forwarding, you can add a mail flow rule in the Exchange admin center that redirects the mailbox's mail to your help desk address.

Microsoft 365 blocks automatic forwarding to outside addresses by default. In the Microsoft Defender portal, set the outbound anti-spam policy's automatic forwarding to on, for the whole company or for a policy that covers just the help desk mailbox. Until then, forwarded mail bounces back to the sender.

Forward a Google Workspace mailbox

1. In the Google Admin console, open the Gmail settings and add a routing rule.
2. For messages to your help desk address, choose to also deliver them to more recipients, and add your help desk address.
3. Save.

Or make a Google group for your help desk address, allow external members, and add your TekStacks help desk address as a member.

Forward from anything else

Forward all mail from your help desk mailbox to your help desk address. Forward every message, not only some: TekStacks drops auto replies and bounces itself.

Test it

1. From an address that belongs to one of your employees, send a message to your help desk mailbox.
2. Open Help desk. The message is a new ticket with that employee as requester.
3. Reply to the ticket. When the employee replies to that mail, the reply is added to the same ticket.

Link an unmatched sender

1. Open the ticket. It shows the Unmatched sender warning.
2. Click Link sender.
3. In Employee or contact, pick the person, and click Link.

The warning goes, the person becomes the requester, and they are sent the acknowledgment. If your company manages clients and the ticket has equipment on it, the person must be in the same client as that equipment.

Add an unmatched sender as an employee

1. Open the ticket. It shows the Unmatched sender warning.
2. Click Add as employee. Email is filled in with the address the message came from, and Name with the sender's name when the message had one.
3. Check the Name and Email, and click Add.

The sender is added as an employee of the ticket's client, and becomes its requester. The warning goes and they are sent the acknowledgment. If an employee already has that email, nothing is added: link the sender to that employee instead. To fill in more of their details, see Add an employee.

Close a ticket from an unmatched sender

Open the ticket and click Close. Nothing is sent to the sender.

Notes

Note: The company is found from the address a message was sent to, never from anything else in it. Mail sent to an address that is not a help desk address is dropped.

Note: Requesters get help desk mail from your help desk address until your own sending address is verified. See The sending address.

Note: An employee who has left no longer matches. Mail from them opens a ticket from an unmatched sender.

Troubleshooting

Mail I forwarded did not become a ticket. Check that forwarding is on and goes to the address on Help desk address exactly. In Microsoft 365, check that the outbound anti-spam policy allows automatic forwarding. A message with an auto reply or mailing list header is dropped on purpose, and so is anything past 30 messages an hour from one sender.

A reply opened a new ticket instead of joining its ticket. The reply came from someone who is not the ticket's requester or a subscriber, or its subject lost the reference in brackets and the mail headers did not carry it. Merge the two tickets, or add the person as a subscriber so their replies join.

A ticket has a private note saying "Attachments not saved". A file was larger than 10 MB, the files together were larger than 25 MB, or your help desk storage is full. Ask the requester for the files another way, or free space by deleting old attachments in Attachment retention.

There is no Link sender button. You need Reply, add notes, assign and change tickets, and the ticket must still be from an unmatched sender.

There is no Add as employee button. You need Reply, add notes, assign and change tickets and Add, edit, import and mark employees as left (never delete), and the ticket must still be from an unmatched sender.

FAQ

Can I change the help desk address? No. It is random and fixed. Forward your own mailbox to it, and requesters see only your own address.

Does the sender of a dropped message hear about it? No. Dropped mail is not answered, so two help desks cannot reply to each other forever.

Why did a known sender not get an acknowledgment? Their address matched no current employee, so the ticket is from an unmatched sender. Link them, and the acknowledgment is sent.