Email to ticket is off by default. Switch Mode to IMAP polling in Settings, Email and fill in the mailbox details.
What you need:
- The PHP IMAP extension on your host. If it is missing, the Email tab shows a warning and polling simply does nothing. Forms, the REST route and the sales integrations all keep working without it.
- Host, port, username and password. Use an app password where your provider requires one.
- A folder, INBOX by default, and the SSL toggle.
How polling works:
- Every five minutes the background job opens the mailbox and searches for unseen messages.
- Each message is parsed for the sender, the subject and the body. Plain text is preferred, HTML is stripped as a fallback, and common quoted reply markers are trimmed off the bottom.
- If the subject carries a ticket reference in square brackets, the message is appended to that ticket and the ticket is reopened. If not, a new ticket is created on the email channel.
- The message is then flagged as seen so it is not processed twice.
Duplicate protection:
Every stored message keeps the original email Message-ID. If a message with the same id is already on file, it is skipped, so a re-delivered email cannot create a second ticket.
Outbound replies:
Replies are sent with wp_mail using the reply-from name and address in Settings, General. The subject is prefixed with the ticket reference and Re:, and each mail carries an X-ASD-Ticket header plus a footer reminding the customer that replying continues the conversation. That prefix is exactly what the poller reads to thread the answer back onto the right ticket, so leave it in place.