Why aren't my emails arriving as tickets?

You've sent an email to your support address, but no ticket has appeared in the inbox. This article goes through the usual causes, most likely first, and how to check each one.

Everything below starts from the desk's mailbox card: go to Settings → Help Desks, pick the desk, and open the Channels tab.

1. It hasn't been picked up yet

How quickly email arrives depends on how the mailbox is connected:

• Gmail: almost instantly. IntelliDesk also checks every 5 minutes as a back-up.
• Outlook / Office 365 and IMAP/SMTP: IntelliDesk checks the mailbox every 5 minutes, so a new email can take up to about 5 minutes to become a ticket.

To check straight away, click Sync mailbox. It tells you what it found, for example 1 new ticket, 1 reply added to existing tickets, or No new email since the last check.

2. The mailbox is retrying, in Error, or not connected

Look at the card:

• Connected with no notice: all good; move on to the next cause.
• Sync is retrying: the last check failed (for example the mail server didn't answer), and IntelliDesk will try again automatically on the next check. The notice says how many checks in a row have failed. Short blips usually clear on their own; you don't need to do anything yet.
• Error (with an Email account error box giving the reason): IntelliDesk has paused checking this mailbox. That happens straight away when the mailbox rejects the sign-in (a changed password, an expired app password, or access removed in Google or Microsoft), or after 5 failed checks in a row (about 25 minutes).
• Disconnected or Not connected: there's no mailbox on this desk.

A mailbox in Error is no longer checked automatically, so nothing new arrives until it's fixed. See Reconnecting a mailbox that shows Error for the fix.

3. You sent the test from the support address itself

IntelliDesk ignores email sent from the connected mailbox's own address, so your own outgoing replies don't turn into tickets. If you test by emailing support@yourcompany.com from support@yourcompany.com, nothing will appear. Send the test from a different account, such as your personal email.

4. The email didn't land in the inbox

IntelliDesk only reads the mailbox's inbox. It doesn't read other folders, and it skips spam and trash. So an email won't become a ticket if:

• your email provider put it in Spam or Junk;
• a rule or filter in the mailbox moved it to another folder, archived it, or deleted it before IntelliDesk saw it.

Check the mailbox directly (in Gmail, Outlook or your webmail). If you find the email in another folder, move it back to the inbox and click Sync mailbox, then change the filter so it doesn't happen again.

5. The sender is blocked

If someone on your team blocked the sender (or their whole domain), their email is dropped for that desk: no new ticket, and nothing added to existing ones. Check the desk's blocked list under Settings → Help Desks → your desk → Settings, in the Blocked senders section, and Unblock them if needed. When Sync mailbox reports emails as skipped, a blocked sender is one of the possible reasons (the others are emails already imported and automatic replies).

6. It went to a different mailbox, or a different desk

Each desk has its own mailbox. Check the address shown next to the badge on the card: that's the account IntelliDesk actually signed in to. If someone connected the wrong account (for example their own mailbox instead of support@), email to the support address won't arrive on that desk. Disconnect it and connect the right account.

If one email was sent to two of your desks (for example To support@ and CC billing@), IntelliDesk creates one ticket, not two. It belongs to the desk the email was sent To. If the copy for the To desk arrives second, the ticket moves to that desk, as long as nobody has worked on it yet; otherwise it stays put and gets a note saying the other desk received it too. So look on your other desks before assuming the email is missing.

If the email was a reply to an existing ticket, it won't appear as a new ticket. It's added to the conversation on the original ticket instead, and the ticket moves to the top of the inbox.

7. The email arrived before the mailbox was connected

With Skip initial sync (recommended) switched on when you connected (the default), only email that arrives after connecting becomes tickets. Anything already in the mailbox is left alone.

8. Outlook only: the email has no subject

On Outlook / Office 365 mailboxes, an email with an empty subject line isn't turned into a ticket. Ask the customer to resend it with a subject.

Checking Recent events

Under the mailbox card, click Recent events to see every connect, disconnect and failed sync or sign-in for that mailbox, newest first, with the error message where there was one. It's the quickest way to see when a mailbox stopped working and why.

Still stuck?

If the mailbox shows Connected, the email is in the inbox, it wasn't sent from the support address itself, and Sync mailbox still says there's nothing new, contact IntelliDesk support. Tell us the desk name, the sender's address, and roughly when the email was sent.

Related: Connecting a mailbox: Gmail, Outlook, and IMAP · Reconnecting a mailbox that shows Error · Keeping the inbox clean: merge, block and delete