Mail is not a ticket yet
This is a deliberate product decision, not a missing feature. Cleaning up a wrongly opened record costs more than reading one message once. The queue is where an item waits before it is allowed to become work.
Email from a customer does not turn straight into a ticket. It lands in the inbox as a raw item first; an operator reads it and either attaches it to an existing ticket or opens a new one. The screen is labelled “whatever came in, it is here”: pending and processed items sit in separate tabs, with channel filters across the top. Collection does not happen inside the application but in a separate worker service that checks the mailbox every 60 seconds. The outbound side belongs to the same module: status and resolution changes reach the requester as templated email.
Pending and processed, kept apart
Status tabs split into Pending and Processed. A channel filter narrows to All, Email, Portal or Agent-sourced items. The pending pile and closed traffic never mix in the same list.
Allowed addresses and domains
Which senders and domains may raise a request is defined on the inbound email tab in settings. Mail from an unlisted source creates nothing on its own. That keeps an unknown sender from writing directly into your work queue.
A reply joins its ticket
A reply in the same thread is added under the related ticket instead of opening a new one. Three replies from a customer are meant to give one record with three messages, not three records. Whether a follow-up message lands on the right ticket is not yet treated as verified; it sits on the roadmap as an improvement item.
A separate service does the fetching
IMAP polling runs in its own container, inbound-worker, which scans the mailbox once every 60 seconds. Incoming mail is stored in its own table, apart from the ticket table. When something goes wrong, the service log tells you which layer it went wrong in.
Outbound mail comes from templates
Changes to status, owner and resolution notify the requester. The wording lives on the notification templates tab in settings, and sending runs through a queue tied to your SMTP configuration. Changing a template does not mean touching code.
Notification is per user, not per role
Being an administrator does not mean receiving every ticket email. Subscription is defined per user rather than per role, so someone with broad permissions can stay off the list. The point is simple: not filling mailboxes nobody reads.
Email is not the only channel
Portal requests and agent-sourced items land in the same queue and separate out through the channel filter. Portal users are set up by invitation, managed on their own settings tab. On the WhatsApp side a webhook endpoint exists as a notification channel.
Where this module stands today
The mail queue and ticket creation from it have been seen working; the counter for ignored mail and the behaviour of the following message are still unverified. Two items are logged as open risks on the notification side: notifications occasionally being skipped, and mail reaching an administrator who has nothing to do with the ticket. We are not describing them as solved.
How a customer email becomes a ticket
- 1Mail arrivesThe customer writes to the support address. No record exists yet; the message is only in the mailbox.
- 2The worker picks it upinbound-worker reads the mailbox on its 60-second round and writes the message into the inbound mail table. It appears under Pending, channel Email.
- 3Sender checkThe address or domain is checked against the allowed list. If it is not there, the item stays in the queue and raises nothing.
- 4Thread or new requestIf the message replies to an existing subject, it is added under that record. If the subject is new, it reaches the operator as a candidate request.
- 5The operator decidesThe operator matches the customer (a department in organization mode) and the person, links a device if relevant, and opens the ticket. The item moves to Processed.
- 6The requester hears backAs status, owner or resolution changes, templated email goes out to the requester through the send queue.
- 7The channel stays on recordThe ticket's source field is marked as Email. The channel breakdown in support reports shows which route generates how much work.
Frequently asked
Would it not be faster if incoming mail turned into a ticket by itself?
Because removing a record that should never have existed costs more than reading one message. Marketing mail, auto-replies and off-topic threads stay in the queue instead of polluting your list. You can widen or narrow which sources may raise a request through the inbound email rules in settings.
Can mail from an address I do not know open a ticket?
No. Mail outside the allowed address and domain definition raises nothing on its own and waits in the queue. The ignore counter and the handling of the following message are not yet treated as verified.
A customer replied three times on one subject. Do I get three tickets?
That is the design: replies in the same thread are added under the existing ticket, one record with messages stacked in order. The behaviour of a follow-up message is still waiting on live verification, so we do not state it as a guarantee.
I am an administrator and every ticket email reaches me. Can I stop that?
Notification subscription is per user, not per role, so being an administrator does not subscribe you to anything. That said, mail reaching an unrelated administrator is logged as an open risk, and notification subscription needs retesting.
How do I know a notification actually went out?
Sending runs through a queue and a send record is kept. How much of that history is exposed on screen, and manual resend control, are still among the items we need to settle — so we are not calling this finished.
What about requests that come by phone or WhatsApp?
The inbox collects email, portal and agent channels. Phone and in-person requests have their own values in the ticket's source field, while WhatsApp and SMS fall under “Other”. On the WhatsApp side a webhook endpoint also exists as a notification channel.
Who it helps
First-line teams taking incoming requests, and managers who want to decide which mail traffic is allowed to create work.
Related modules
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