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Mailboxes - Inbound Email Ticket Creation

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Table of Contents

 

Summary

Our Leads module functions as an inbox, where all incoming emails and web form submissions show up. Think of a lead as a lightweight inbound contact request. Make sure you have enabled the Leads module to make these methods work.

  1. Navigate to Admin > Leads - Preferences.
  2. Check the Enable Leads Module box.
  3. Click Save.

There are a couple of ways to convert leads to tickets.

  1. Set up a Mailbox to use your custom branded email address, such as support@mycompany.com. This requires a little more effort but looks more professional and gives more options. We recommend this route.
  2. Use the default email address we give you, yourdomain@reply.repairshopr.com, for customers to email you and for you to reply back with using it as your "from" address. It's simpler but uses our branding.

 

Method 1: Set up a Mailbox

This method assumes you have set up an external email address, such as support@mycompany.com, and that you have added an SPF record for it.

  1. Navigate to Admin > Emails - Mailboxes (inbound email).
  2. In the upper right, click New Mailbox.
  3. Change the Mailbox Display Name if desired.
  4. Enter your Email Address, like "support@yourcompany.com".
  5. Click the Automatically create tickets from emails to this mailbox dropdown and select your desired option:
    • Never: No Tickets will be created from inbound email.
    • Always: The system will create tickets from inbound email (assuming there's enough data to create a customer).
    • Only for Existing Customers: Tickets will only be created if a customer exists in your account already.
  6. If a ticket fails to be created, it will still make a Lead. If you enable the Send Lead/Ticket Autoresponder (respectively) checkbox, we will use the new Lead and Ticket Autoresponder templates. Click those template blue links on this page to access them.
  7. Enable After-Hours AutoResponders - Check this box and it will allow you to create separate autoresponders for both leads and tickets that are sent out inside and outside of business hours. Click Advanced - Autoresponder Override below to define those templates.
  8. When you set the Automatically create tickets dropdown (5) to Always or Only for Existing Customers, these fields will appear. You can optionally preset the Issue Type, Ticket Status, and Assign it to someone.
  9. When finished, click Create Mailbox.

Next, you'll need to "Activate" this mailbox. This is just a simple step that tells us if you have forwarded your email address correctly.

  1. Next to the mailbox you just created, click Activate.

     
  2. Follow the steps listed on the screen to forward your email address to us, set up your SPF record if you want, and then send us that test email.

     
  3. Once the mailbox becomes active, if you want all your outbound emails to send from this email address, then next to the mailbox, click Make Outbound. This way replies always come back into the system properly.

Troubleshooting

If you are unable to activate your Mailbox, be sure to allowlist the forwarding address to prevent the system from blocking it.

Verify that you have entered the long email string correctly. A common reason the mailbox won't activate is because an email is not getting sent to the correct address.

 

Method 2: Use your default email address

If you do not want to set up an external email address to convert emails to tickets, you can simply use the default email address we provide you instead and enable a setting.

The inbound email address defaults to yoursubdomain@reply.repairshopr.com. This is the address to give your customers for them to email you, and it's also the "from" address used when replying to them.

Note: If you change your subdomain, that email address will change to reflect it. Make sure to let your customers know about the change, as the old one will no longer work.

Automatically create tickets

To have incoming emails automatically converted to tickets if the sender of the email matches an existing Customer (or a Contact of the Customer),

  1. Navigate to Admin > Tickets - Preferences.
  2. Enable Create Tickets from Leads (if valid).
  3. Click Save.

This setting affects any inbound email to your default email that isn't already another type of classifiable message, like a reply to an existing Ticket or Estimate.

Note that this setting does not affect any Mailboxes that exist (see the above section); it only is for messages sent to your default email address. You can technically use Mailboxes and your default email address simultaneously, but we recommend using just one or the other to prevent confusion.

 

Automatically create tickets with Email Rules

These rules will give you the power to assign an UNKNOWN inbound email to a customer, or even a contact under a customer. Think of these fields as a search, where you can input partial address/subjects and we'll apply the first rule that matches.

You can create Email Rules by navigating to Admin > Emails - Email Rules.

Example: Subject filter

Maybe you want any emails with the subject containing "medcorp" to attach to your customer called Medical Corp. Just create a rule with a period in the Email address field, the Subject filter with "medcorp" and attach the email rule to that Customer name.

Example: Email address

Perhaps you get emails from many employees at the same company, and you would like to auto-create a contact for every new email that comes into the system. Just create a rule with the Email address set to their domain, e.g., medcorp.com, and then any inbound email that contains their domain will attach to the correct customer. You can also check the box Auto create Contact under above customer and if there isn't a contact, we'll create one for the resulting Ticket.

Note: Email rules are matched by order. Using '@domain' will exactly match 'user@domain.com' whereas 'domain' will match any subdomain with that word such as 'user@a.different.domain'.

Auto-Assign ticket to an employee using Email Rules

If you are auto-creating tickets from your leads, you can even have the rule auto-assign the ticket to one of your employees.

Note: Email rules run top-down, so if the first rule does not apply, the system will continue to check the list until it finds a rule to apply. This will ensure that if you have multiple rules it will not cause duplications.

Create Email Rules from Customer Detail

You can create and manage Email Rules at a customer level from the Customer Detail screen. To do this,

  1. Head to the Customers tab.
  2. Search for and click a customer's name to open their Customer Detail page.
  3. In the upper right, click the Edit button.
  4. Click the Custom Fields tab.
  5. Enter your customer domains into the Email Domain(s) field and Email Rules will be automatically created and attached to your primary mailbox.
  6. When finished, click Save Changes. An Email Rule will be created for the domain and the Auto Contact create will be enabled.

Back on the Customer Detail screen, scroll down to see the Email Rules section. To manage the Email Rules for the customer, click a domain under the Email Address column.

Note: You cannot use popular free email services, such as Gmail, for email addresses as Mailbox Rules are designed to work with the domain. Using a popular free email service would cause all the emails from that domain to go to a single customer, so they are not available for use.

Email Rules are applied in order from the top down and once an email rule criteria is met, they will stop processing additional email rules.

 

Forward Customer emails into system

If you want to forward customer emails into the system, just forward them in from an email that is a User Account and the resulting Lead/Ticket will have the customer information attached properly!

Note: The Subject must contain "FW:" in order for RepairShopr to recognize this is a forward and this will ensure we parse the email for the right customer data.

It is also possible to send a email in to your Mailbox and attach it to an existing ticket. Add the instructions below to the subject of the email. You can use this from tech tools or other automated systems to automatically attach documents/logs to tickets.

Simply insert:
TICKET:1234

"TICKET" must be capitalized, followed by a colon, then the ticket number you wish to attach the email to.

 

Ticket CC Magic

If you have automatic ticket creation turned on and a customer sends you a email with someone CC'd on the email, then the CC'd person will be attached to the ticket as an Additional CC automatically. This will appear under the Additional CC's in the ticket.

It's also possible for a customer/client to copy (CC) someone on a ticket comment response to your ticket and the CC'd person will be attached on the ticket as an Additional CC.

 

SPF (Email Security) - Keep yourself out of spam folders

SPF is a special DNS record you need to create so that other mail servers know we are allowed to send email on your behalf. You probably already have a record created. For example, with Office 365 it looks like:

 v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com -all

If you want to add our server as permitted to also send on behalf of your domain, you should add our IP like this:
168.245.102.208

Example new SPF record:
v=spf1 include:spf.protection.outlook.com +ip4:168.245.102.208 -all

Adding the above record basically says that for your domain, the outlook.com server and our IP are allowed to send on your behalf.

You basically just insert "+ip4:168.245.102.208" into the middle of your existing record, or if you don't have an existing record, make a new DNS record like:
DNS Record Type: TXT
v=spf1 +ip4:168.245.102.208 -all

NOTE: Our outgoing email provider, Sendgrid, may employ various sending IP addresses in addition to the one listed. These addresses may change over time. If the above IP address isn't working for you, you may want to check your email headers for the sending IP address and add it to your SPF record also.

Troubleshooting

If you have forwarded your emails correctly and they are still not showing up in RepairShopr, ensure your email is being forwarded as the originating address and not the forwarded address. Some providers call this redirecting. Ensure you are using the type for your provider so the email comes to Syncro as the original email address.

Q: Leads and/or tickets aren't being created in my account.

A: This commonly happens if the Leads module is disabled on the account. Head to Admin > Leads - Preferences and make sure the Enable Leads Module is checked. The Leads module is actually a component of the email system and needs to be active for inbound email routing to work.

Q: Email doesn't seem to be hitting my account like it used to. What could be happening?

A: Definitely make sure the Leads are turned on first in the Leads Preferences. After that, if NO email is coming in across all customers, most often this is because of the inbound traffic not being forwarded (routed) correctly back to the RepairShopr account.

We'd recommend that you head to Admin > Emails - Mailboxes (inbound email) > Edit your Mailbox > Copy the "rsmbox" address on the right and try emailing that from your email address. If a Lead is created from that test email, then that means the RepairShopr system is accepting inbound traffic and the likely culprit is a bad forwarding rule on your email server side that forwards to RepairShopr.

Q: Emails aren't showing up in Repairshopr, and I'm seeing a 'Relay access denied' error on my mail server. What's going on?

A: It's likely that emails aren't actually being sent from your server due to a lack of relay permissions. This can happen when you're using third party email protection, and may mean one of two things:

  • The SPF record of your email server isn’t configured properly, and is being detected as ‘High risk’ by your email filtering service, which blocks the sending of the email to protect the recipients.
  • A new IP range may have been recently added by your email provider, and this range needs to be added to your filtering service’s relay table to authorize it.

Depending on your provider, you may or may not have access to make the required adjustments to your SPF record or relay table. If you find that you cannot make the necessary changes, we recommend contacting your email provider or spam filtering provider for assistance.

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