A ticket arrives and you want to know what this person has written to you before, including mail that never became a ticket, or the replies you sent from your mail client. Once a mailbox is connected, every ticket has an Email history card in the sidebar that searches that mailbox for the customer.
Using it:
- Open any ticket and find the Email history card in the sidebar.
- Click Search Mailbox. The desk lists the newest emails to and from the customer, up to 25, newest first, each marked From them or To them with its subject and date.
- Click any email to read it on the ticket. Click it again to fold it away.
Linked emails saved on the contact are searched too, so mail sent from the customer's other addresses is included. Results are kept for five minutes. Click Search Again for a fresh look.
Connecting Gmail or Google Workspace:
- Personal Gmail has IMAP switched on already. On Google Workspace, your administrator has to allow IMAP for your account.
- Create an app password at myaccount.google.com/apppasswords. 2-Step Verification has to be on before Google offers that page. Your normal password will not work over IMAP.
- In Settings, Email enter the host imap.gmail.com, port 993, SSL on, your full email address as the username, and the app password as the password. Save.
On Gmail the desk searches the All Mail folder, which holds what they sent you and what you sent them together, so the whole conversation appears in one list.
Other mail hosts:
Any IMAP mailbox works with the host, port and login your provider gives you. The desk searches the folder you chose in Settings, Email plus your Sent folder.
It only ever reads:
The mailbox is opened read-only and every message is fetched without marking it as read. That matters, because email to ticket works by turning unread mail into tickets. Searching history never marks anything as read, never moves a message and never deletes one, so it cannot interfere with new mail becoming tickets.
It works with email to ticket switched off:
Email history only needs the saved mailbox details. You can leave Mode on disabled, keep taking tickets through your form and portal, and still read a customer's email history from the ticket.
What you can open:
From a ticket, only emails to or from that customer's addresses can be opened. The desk checks this on the server each time, so the card can never be used to browse the rest of the mailbox.
Good to know:
- Very long emails are shortened on screen, with a note to open your mailbox for the rest.
- Attachments are not shown. Only the readable text of the email is.
- HTML emails are converted to plain text for reading.
- The PHP IMAP extension has to be installed on your server. If the card says it is missing, ask your host to enable php-imap. That is a server setting and not something the plugin can switch on.