Email to ticket

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Email to ticket turns messages sent to your support address into tickets. You connect a mailbox under Settings > Mailboxes, and each new message becomes a ticket in the queue you choose. A reply to that ticket’s email joins the same ticket. Your technicians answer from the console, and the requester gets an ordinary email from your support address. This page explains how it works and the choices you make when you set it up.

How email becomes a ticket

Outpost checks each mailbox for new mail on a schedule, no more often than every 30 seconds. For each message it:

Drops mail it sent itself, such as its own test and daily check messages.
Holds anything it should not ticket, such as spam, automatic replies, and mail that fails sender authentication, in Suspended mail.
Looks for the ticket the message replies to. A reply joins that ticket. See Email threading.
Opens a new ticket for anything else, in the mailbox’s queue, with the mailbox’s default priority and category.
Saves the attachments, and adds the people on Cc as participants on the ticket.
Marks the message as read in the mailbox.

Outpost never deletes mail from your mailbox. Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace mail is marked as read and left where it is. IMAP mail is marked as read and, where the server supports it, moved to a folder named Outpost/Processed.

Outpost collects mail that arrives after you connect the mailbox. Older mail stays in the mailbox and does not become tickets.

Ways to connect a mailbox

Add mailbox opens the Add a support mailbox wizard. It asks for the address, checks who hosts it, and recommends a way to connect. You can choose another.

Method	Use it when	Replies go out through
Microsoft 365 app connection (recommended for Microsoft 365)	The mailbox is in Microsoft 365, including a shared mailbox. An admin approves the Outpost Mail app once and runs a script that limits it to this one mailbox. Nothing expires. See Connect a Microsoft 365 mailbox.	Microsoft 365, from the mailbox itself
Sign in as the mailbox	You want Microsoft 365 connected quickly and can renew the sign-in when it expires.	Microsoft 365
Your own Entra app registration (advanced)	Your organization manages its own app registration.	Microsoft 365
Google Workspace domain-wide delegation (recommended for Google Workspace)	The mailbox is in Google Workspace. A super admin authorizes Outpost once in the Admin console. See Connect a Google Workspace mailbox.	Gmail, from the mailbox itself
Your own Google service account (advanced)	You want a service account from your own Google Cloud project.	Gmail
IMAP with a password	Any other host, such as Zoho Mail, Fastmail, or iCloud Mail, or a personal Gmail or Yahoo account. See Connect a mailbox with IMAP.	The mailbox’s SMTP server, or your outgoing email provider
Forward mail to Outpost	You cannot or do not want to give Outpost access to the mailbox. Your mail host forwards a copy of every message to an Outpost address. See Forward email to Outpost.	Your outgoing email provider

When replies go out through your outgoing email provider, their Reply-To is the support mailbox’s address, so customer replies come back to it. See Configure outgoing email.

After you connect, the wizard tests the mailbox: it connects, signs in, checks its access, sends a test message to the mailbox, and waits for it to arrive. Then you choose where new tickets land.

Replies and threading

A technician’s public reply goes out as an ordinary email from the mailbox the ticket arrived on. The subject carries the ticket number with a short check code, such as [OUT-1042-7f3a], and the message carries headers that let the customer’s reply find its ticket. See Email threading and Ticket notification emails.

Sender verification

Anyone can put any address in a message’s From line. Before Outpost emails a sender back, it checks that the mail really came from them. A sender is verified when one of these is true:

The address belongs to a known person at the client.
The message passes sender authentication: DMARC, or SPF or DKIM aligned with the From domain.
You allow the sender, or turn on Trust all senders.

Mail from a sender Outpost cannot verify still becomes a ticket, marked Unverified sender. No email goes out on that ticket, to the sender or to anyone they copied, until a technician checks who sent it and selects Verify sender on the ticket. Verifying needs ticket:write. See Tickets.

You can choose per mailbox to hold that mail instead. In the wizard’s Routing step, set Senders Outpost cannot verify to Hold in Suspended mail for review. The mail then waits in Suspended mail until someone releases it.

Mail that fails DMARC is never ticketed unless you allow the sender. It goes to Suspended mail as Failed sender authentication.

Trust all senders

Trust all senders treats every sender as verified. Every message becomes a ticket and replies go back to whoever sent it, including spoofed senders pretending to be a client. Leave it off unless your mail filter already blocks spoofing. The setting is on the Automatic tickets tab of Desk settings, and each mailbox can override it in its Senders setting. Mail that fails DMARC or comes from a blocked sender is still held.

Allow and block senders

From a message in Suspended mail you can Allow sender, Block sender, or Block domain. Mail from an allowed sender is ticketed as verified, even when it fails DMARC. Mail from a blocked sender or domain is held as Blocked sender, and a block wins over an allow.

Client email domains

On the MSP plan, a mailbox set up for your practice can take mail for every client. Outpost decides which client a new ticket belongs to from the sender:

A sender whose domain is one of a client’s email domains is that client’s. If the sender is not yet a contact, Outpost adds them as one.
A sender who is a known person at a client is that client’s.
Otherwise, the mailbox’s default client, chosen in the Client setting.

Add a client’s domains on the client’s record, on the Email domains card. Enter the domain, such as contoso.com, in Add a domain and select Add. A domain belongs to one client only, and a public mail domain such as gmail.com is refused. Domains the client already uses for portal sign-in are listed too, marked From portal sign-in, and are removed from the portal settings rather than here. See Clients.

A client domain decides which client a ticket belongs to. On its own it does not verify the sender: mail from a client’s domain that fails sender authentication opens an unverified ticket for that client.

People on Cc, and people on To other than the support mailbox, are added to the ticket as CC participants, so they receive its emails. This happens on a new ticket and on a reply that threads by its headers. Up to 20 people are added from one message. These are never added:

Your own mailboxes and Outpost’s own addresses.
The requester.
Blocked addresses.
Role addresses: postmaster@, mailer-daemon@, noreply@, no-reply@, and donotreply@.

On an unverified ticket the CCs are added but sent nothing until a technician verifies the sender.

Reply cleanup and the original message

Customers reply above the quoted history, and their mail apps add signatures. Outpost removes the quoted history and the signature, so the ticket shows what the customer wrote this time. Select Show original under a message to see the full text as it arrived, and Download the .eml file to get the message itself.

Attachments are saved on the ticket. Small inline images, such as signature logos and tracking pixels, are left out. An attachment over 25 MB is not saved, and an internal note on the ticket lists it.

Automatic replies and floods

An out-of-office reply or other automatic message never opens a ticket. If it replies to a ticket, it is added as an internal note and nobody is notified. Otherwise it goes to Suspended mail as Automatic reply.

If one sender opens 20 new tickets in an hour, further new mail from them goes to Suspended mail as Too many messages. Replies to existing tickets are not affected.

Health and the daily check

Each mailbox shows its health in the list: Connected, Needs attention, Reconnect needed, Waiting for first sync, or Off. Once a day Outpost sends a message to each mailbox through its own reply path and checks that it arrives. When a mailbox stops working, Outpost raises an alert. See Troubleshoot a support mailbox.

Plans and Remote Outpost

Email to ticket is part of the service desk, on Enterprise and MSP. On a plan without it, the mailbox pages show a lock and no mail is collected. See Plan-locked features.

Remote Outpost has no internet connection, so only IMAP with a password is available. The other methods show Not available on an offline server. Replies go out through the mailbox’s SMTP server or the Your own SMTP server provider in Settings > Email.

Permissions

mailbox:manage covers every mailbox page, including reading the list, because a mailbox holds credentials to a mail server. It also covers Suspended mail, client email domains, and Trust all senders. Among the built-in roles, only the owner holds it. See Roles and permissions.

Content is licensed CC BY 4.0. Code samples are MIT. Outpost and the Outpost mark are trademarks of Outpost Business Solutions, PBC and are not covered by either license.