HF PanelEmail to ticket
Turn emails to support@ into support tickets, add email replies to their ticket, and decide what happens to unknown senders.
With Email to ticket on, customers can write to your support address instead of opening a ticket in the panel: each email becomes a support ticket for the customer's account, and when they answer a ticket email, the answer is added to that ticket. Your replies from the panel keep going out by email, as before.
Where: Server Admin › Support › Email to ticket
Switch it on
- Tick Turn emails to the support address into tickets.
- Choose what happens to Emails from unknown addresses (see below).
- Set Largest attachment (MB) (1–25, default 10) and Emails per sender per hour (1–100, default 10).
- Click Save.
The support address is support@ on the panel's own domain (shown as Support address). Its mail keeps going where
it went before; a copy of every message also goes to the intake mailbox hf-support@ on the same domain, which the
panel reads every 5 minutes. Click Fetch now to read it straight away. Messages stay in that mailbox (marked as
read); nothing is deleted.
Note: the server must handle email (the panel's domain receives mail here). Switching the feature off stops the copies; the intake mailbox and its messages are kept.
What happens to an email
| The email | What the panel does |
|---|---|
| comes from the email address of an account (or of one of its Team members) | opens a new ticket for that account and sends the sender an acknowledgement with the ticket number |
| answers a ticket email | adds the text to that ticket (only when it comes from the ticket's customer or a team member of the account) |
| answers a ticket email and comes from a staff login that may answer the ticket | adds it as a staff reply |
| comes from an address no account has, or one several accounts share | Keep them waiting for verification: listed under Waiting for verification on Support tickets. Refuse them (the sender is told): logged only |
| is an automatic email (out-of-office reply, bounce, mailing list, newsletter) or comes from the panel's own addresses | skipped and logged, never answered |
| is the same email again, or the sender is over Emails per sender per hour | skipped and logged |
A sender whose address is unknown gets one short answer a day at most, saying the email is being checked (or, when refused, that they should write from their account's address or open a ticket in the panel).
How replies find their ticket
Each ticket email carries the ticket's own reply address, support+t12.<code>@yourdomain.com, and a matching
Message-ID. The code is a signature only the panel can make, so a reply cannot be pushed into another customer's
ticket by guessing numbers. When the server already uses another separator than + for sub-addresses, replies are
matched by their email headers and by [Ticket #12] in the subject instead (from the ticket's customer only).
The text above the line ##- Please type your reply above this line -## is kept; the quoted earlier emails below it are cut off.
Text, attachments and safety
- HTML emails are turned into plain text; nothing is ever shown as HTML.
- Up to 10 attachments per email, each up to Largest attachment (MB) and 25 MB in all. Each one is checked with the server's malware scanner (ClamAV when it is installed, plus HostFog's own checks). A clean file can be downloaded from the ticket; an infected or too-large one is listed with Malware found — not kept or Too large — not kept, without its content.
- Attachments are always downloaded, never opened in the browser.
Emails waiting for verification
On Support tickets, Waiting for verification lists the emails from unknown senders. For each one:
- enter the Account (username) and click Open as ticket — the email becomes that account's ticket, with its attachments, or
- click Put aside — no ticket is opened; the email is kept.
Ratings
Ask customers to rate closed tickets and ended chats switches satisfaction ratings on or off (on by default).
Emails received
The table lists the last 100 emails the intake handled: when, from whom, the subject and the Result (for example New ticket, Added to ticket, Waiting for verification, Automatic email, skipped), with a link to the ticket.
Resellers
A reseller with their brand on can set their own support address under Email to ticket in the Reseller Panel. Emails to it become tickets for that reseller's customers, and unknown senders wait for that reseller.