E-Mail Support

The easiest way to support your customers - email!

Tired of logging in to your support site every time a client answers a ticket? With the e-mail support add-on you can reply directly by e-mail!  Users can even create a new ticket and account by simply sending an email to your designated support address!

Whenever something happens on your support site (a client opens a new ticket, an agent replies to an existing ticket, etc), an e-mail notification is sent out automatically.

With this add-on enabled, there is no longer a need to log into the support site to reply to a ticket. Agents and clients can simply reply to the e-mail and their message will automatically be added to the ticket.

To use this add-on you will need an e-mail address dedicated to the support system. You won’t need to check the inbox; Awesome Support will do it for you.

At a frequency you decide, the system will check your inbox. If there is an e-mail from a client or from an agent, the system will retrieve it, delete it from the inbox and add it to the ticket’s discussion. Of course, a new e-mail notification will then be sent to the proper person.

Here is an example of what this add-on allows:

  1. John raises a new support ticket,
  2. Robert, the agent assigned to John’s case, gets an e-mail notification
  3. Robert replies to this e-mail directly without even opening his web browser
  4. Awesome Support notices the e-mail, fetches it and adds Robert’s reply to the ticket
  5. An e-mail is automatically sent to John to notify him that Robert replied to his ticket

As you can see, once the ticket has been opened, there is usually no need to ever log into the system.

Core Features

  • Automatically checks a dedicated email in-box and creates or updates tickets seamlessly
  • Configure handling for email replies to closed tickets (re-open ticket or reject the reply with a customer-friendly message)
  • Supports any POP3 or IMAP inbox including popular free email services such as Gmail and Outlook.com
  • Supports the standard email security protocols such as SSL and TLS
  • Saves unrecognized emails in an “Unassigned” folder – you can decide what to do with them later – no email is ignored
  • Saves the email meta-data to help with handling unrecognized email addresses
  • Saves attachments sent with emails
  • You can control whether an account is automatically created for unrecognized email addresses

Advanced Features

For operations with more sophisticated needs, this add-on supports MULTIPLE MAILBOXES along with MAILBOX RULES.

Multiple Mailboxes

You can create links to more than one support mailbox and the add-on will periodically retrieve mail from each inbox marked as active.  You can create inboxes:

  • For each department
  • For your VIP customers
  • For each product
  • For special promotions

Tickets from each mailbox can automatically be populated with designated priorities, channels, product and department.

Inbox Rules

You can create rules based on the CONTENT of the incoming email. You can scan either the subject or the body of the email and take action based on the result of the scan.  For example, you can create rules:

  • To close tickets based on a special text string your agent enter into an emailed reply (custom commands)
  • To transfer tickets to a different agent based on the text in an emailed reply
  • To skip importing emails for things like out-of-office replies
  • To assign different priorities, status, product, department, etc. based on the contents of the initial ticket or a reply

Security

Control Who Can Create Tickets By Email

Of course, you don’t want just anyone sending you support emails.  Or maybe you do.  Either way you can control who can create tickets and whether or not tickets are allowed to be created for unknown users.

Additionally, INBOX RULES allow you to check the contents of emails before using them to create new tickets or ticket replies.

Control Over Handling Of Closed Tickets

You can decide whether to accept or reject replies to tickets that are already closed.

Filter Data From Emails

Advanced and security-conscious organizations can remove sensitive data from emails using REGULAR EXPRESSIONS.  For example, if customers try to send credit card information or try to use foul language, these can be removed from the incoming emails with rules you specify.

 

Purchase options

  • Billed once per year until cancelled

  • Billed once per year until cancelled

  • Billed once per year until cancelled

Add to Cart

Cart

  • Your cart is empty.

Basic System Requirements

  • WordPress Version 4.9 or later
  • Awesome Support Version 5.8.0 or later
  • PHP 7.1 (7.3 or later recommended)

Additional Requirements

  • The iconv.so library enabled in PHP
  • The mbstring library enabled in PHP
  • An IMAP or POP 3 dedicated email inbox
  • Ports 993 or 995 open on your WordPress server

Documentation

View the documentation

Purchase options

  • Billed once per year until cancelled

  • Billed once per year until cancelled

  • Billed once per year until cancelled

Add to Cart

RELATED ITEMS

The items below are great complements to this product!

 

Did You Know?  You Can Easily Import Your Tickets From ZENDESK, HELPSCOUT and TICKSY With Our Free IMPORTER Add-on? Click here to find out more!

Recurring Subscription Notification

The pricing for this (and most other add-ons) is set as a subscription by default. However, you are free to cancel the recurring subscription at any time – you will still be entitled to the one year of free updates and support from the time of your last payment. The software will generally continue to work without additional payments. However, you should be aware that, as with all software, a future update of any of WordPress / Awesome Support Free Core could include a breaking change. At that time, if you are not on a subscription plan, you will need to purchase a new license to obtain the compatibility updates necessary for the product to continue to work.

To cancel your subscription:

  • Credit card or stripe users- just go to your MY ACCOUNT page on our website.
  • Paypal users - cancel from directly inside your Paypal account.

This notice does not apply to service products such as custom programming or to free plugins.

Related Articles and Videos

9 Cool Things You Can Do With The Email Support Addon

Six Ways To Assign Agents To Your Tickets

Minor updates to a slew of add-ons

The 5 most powerful add-ons for Awesome Support

An extensive and in-depth Awesome Support Review

40+ New or Enhanced Product Features – 3rd Quarter 2017

Potent Combination: Guest Tickets + Power-pack (Productivity) + Email Support

New Core And Add-on Releases For 2017 (100+ New Features So Far…)

21 Options For Notifications (All of the Alerts in Awesome Support)

 

Changelog

Version 5.7.9

  • Fix: The Inbox Rule content was not set.

Version 5.7.8

  • Fix: PHP 8.0.x deprecated error fixed
  • Fix: The email Piping Feature was not working with PHP 8.0
  • Fix: 429-email-support-add-on-warning-undefined-array-key-posttype

Version 5.7.4

  • Fix: Security update

5.7.3

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
! Warning: Breaking Change - The minimum required version of Awesome Support is now 5.7.0!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Tweak: Special handling for audio files when the filename is not specifed in the incoming message.

5.7.2

  • New: Added support for ticket types
  • Fix: Changed up the way we get the contenttransfertype to handle a situation at a client where some emails came in with an arrayiterator for the header contenttransfertype property.
  • Fix: Improved the detection of base64 strings
  • Tweak: Added links to our trouble-shooting page Potential

5.7.1

  • Potential Fix: For a PHP Fatal error: Cannot use isset()

5.7.0

  • New: Added option to set 'from' encoding if not set by the incoming email. This is experimental and intended to be used as a last resort since there are many side-effects.
  • Tweak: Verify file name extensions match the incoming type (eg: image/png should have a png extension). If not, add the extension. Applies to PNG and JPG images only.
  • Tweak: Some minor code optimizations.
  • Dev: New tracking options for when wp-debug is turned on. Use define ('WPAS_EMAIL_LOG', true ) in wp-config to enable this tracing.
  • Tweak: Process multi-part/alternative parts recursively instead of stopping the process there.

5.6.1

  • Fix: Forcibly set the character set to utf-8 when using the quoted_printable_decode function. Workaround for PHP not setting the character-set on the variable to UTF-8.

5.6.0

  • Update: Updating dependent packages to their latest versions (zend-framework mail and such).

5.5.6

  • New: Breaking Change - The minimum required version of Awesome Support is now 5.7.0!
  • Fix: Handle multipart/mixed and multipart/parallel sections of emails as well cas multipart/digest and message/rfc822 part types.
  • Tweak: Explicitly handle image/png and image/jpg parts instead of letting it fall through to the default handler which might sometimes set them as '.txt' files.

5.5.5

  • Fix: Get base64 encoding from multi-part emails
  • Tweak: Make sure postmetas are updated with email headers for new tickets

5.5.4

  • New: Minimum required version of Awesome Support is now 5.2.0
  • Tweak: Added a description to the password field so users can know what characters are legal.

5.5.3

  • Fix: A variable was not declared before being used in a filter
  • Fix: a base64 function check wasn't working as intended which means certain emails were being base64 decoded into nonsensical characters. Replaced it with what should be a better check.

5.5.2

  • Tweak: Added inbox id to tickets metadata when imported from a different mailbox other than the default
  • Tweak: Make more attempts to remove the original message from the reply by using the specially formatted ticket # as a delimiter.
  • Tweak: Added a warning to the settings screen about using the TABLE tag when enabling HTML tags and the PURIFIER

5.5.1

  • New: Added option to fine-tune css attributes when using html purifier.
  • Tweak: Default set of html purifier tags have been widened to include more tags.

5.5.0

  • New: Added an option to NOT strip HTML tags out of emails at all. This is likely to cause rendering issues for tickets but some customers still requested it. Caveat Emptor!

5.4.1

  • Fix: When adding messages to the unassigned folder, they would sometimes fail silently because of character conversion issues.

5.4.0

  • New: Added option to delete unassigned email media when unassigned messages are deleted.
  • New: Added an ultra long interval (3+ years) as a CRON interval option. This simulates a NEVER or DO NOT RUN option.

5.3.0

  • New: Added some exception handling options in settings and created a better exception handling process that reduces the number of times a bad message will cause all emails to fail
  • New: Added an option to control how to handle empty emails when adding to the unassigned folder.
  • Tweak: Cleaned up some internal code documentation items

5.2.2

  • New: do_action hooks after rules update a ticket. New hook names are: wpas_email_after_rules_update and wpas_email_after_inbox_defaults_update.

5.2.1

  • Tweak: Added a TRIM statement around some regex expressions to make sure that whitespace and other non-visible characters are removed when using multiple regex.
  • Tweak: Internal tweak - added the custom post types for inbox and rules engine to the list of awesome support plugin pages using the wpas_plugin_post_types filter.

5.2.0

  • New: If the reply-to email header is set, use it as the incoming user address (experimental)
  • Enh: New version of the HTMLPurifier library (4.10).

5.1.3

  • Fix: Check if a value exists in a variable before using it.

5.1.2

  • Fix: Default inbox agents and agents in email rules were sometimes not assigned properly on new tickets. We are now using the wpas_new_ticket_agent_id  filter to make the assignment more robust.

5.1.1

  • Fix: Properly flag email replies that are from other agents instead of tagging them as unknown
  • Fix: When converting an unassigned email to a ticket or ticket reply, make sure that attachments are attached to the ticket and not left unattached in the media library

5.1.0

The Version 5.x line is a MAJOR update - if you are upgrading from the 0.4.x or 0.3.x versions it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you test this update on a staging site before you deploy it to production!  Additionally as of  5.0.2 you must update your email inbox configuration to explicitly choose the security protocol.  Go to TICKETS->SETTINGS->EMAIL PIPING and verify the SECURE PORT option. Generally it should be set to SSL or NONE. If using more than one mailbox then you also need to go to TICKETS->INBOX CONFIGURATIONS and update your mailboxes there as well.
  • New: Added option to turn off automatic clean-up of email footers.
  • New: Option to specify one or more regex functions to clean up email footers
  • New: Option to specify one or more regex functions to replace data in incoming emails. This is useful if you want to mask credit card information for example.
  • Fix: Issue with emails getting cut off when the word "on" was encountered. It was an issue with attempting to clean the footer in gmail messages.

5.0.3

  • Fix: When adding users there were some instances where the firstname would be blank causing email imports to fail.
  • Fix: Incorrect description under the public/private flag in the inbox rules configuration screen.
  • Fix: Grammar label issue on rules screen

5.0.2

  • New: Requires 4.1.0 or later of Awesome Support Core.
  • New: Option to send notifications for unassigned emails/tickets
  • New: Added options in rules to UPDATE and CLOSE ticket in one action
  • New: Experimental support for TLS
  • New: Option to not import duplicate emails
  • Tweak: Run update rules earlier in the ticket insert process by calling an earlier filter. This allows auto agent assignment to get data it needs since the filters/hooks it uses runs later.
  • Fix: Encoding issue - when email arrived with mixed encoded characters an error was thrown when the TICKETS->SETTINGS->EMAIL PIPING screen encoding settings were blank.
  • Fix: Inbox defaults and rule defaults weren't working properly because a core function was overwriting their values. Fixed by increasing the numeric value of the priorities used.
  • Tweak: Includes new version of ZENDFRAMEWORK library (as of 5.0.2 RC02)
  • Tweak: Add option to turn off email rejection notifications

5.0.1

  • New: New options to control the user name when a user has to be created. Requires AS 4.0.3 or later.
  • New: Option to allow certain html tags to be retained (BETA version - and possibly insecure if enabled since users can retain javascript embedded in emails!)
  • Tweak: Added support for emails where the entire email is encoded in base64 without providing an additional part with ascii/plain or html encoding.
  • Tweak: Added an option to specify a character set for all emails. This allows for the character set to be matched to the MYSQL server but could result in the loss of data for strings that cannot be converted.
  • Tweak: Better logging of rejected emails to the log files.
  • Fix: Styling issues on inbox rules and multi-inbox config pages
  • Fix: Various bug fixes, removing unused code and a bit of code cleanup.
  • Fix: Mailbox rules were unnecessarily overwriting the mailbox defaults for things like priority.
  • Fix: Handle emails where no transfer encoding is specified but the actual encoding is base64.
  • Fix: Handle emails where the encoding is base64
  • Fix: Email rules could not handle spaces in the "rule" field (aka the $rule_contents variable) because it was being sanitized using FILTER_SANITIZE_URL instead of FILTER_SANITIZE_STRING

**NOTE:** Requires 4.0.0 of the core Awesome Support plugin!

5.0.0

  • New: Changed library used to talk to mailboxes from FLOURISH to ZEND
  • Tweak: Changed version numbers to move the primary version to the first digit in the version number (from the second digit)
  • New: Min PHP version is 5.6
  • New: Multiple Mailboxes
  • New: Rules engine for incoming emails
    • Prevent emails from being added
    • Prevent emails from being deleted
    • Update priority/dept/product/etc based on rules for newly added tickets/replies
    • Create custom commands that can be sent via email

**NOTE:** Requires 4.0.0 of the core Awesome Support plugin!

0.4.0 (Internal build)

  • Enhancement: Easier to re-assign unassigned emails
    • Shows both the agent and ticket # field so user can decide if the message is a new ticket or a reply to an existing ticket. Before, the system tried to be the one that figured it out but didn't always do a good - job of that.
    •  Allows user to save agent and/or ticket number without exiting the unassigned ticket. Before, simply choosing one or the other automatically exited the unassigned ticket and could sometimes lead to the user not - realizing where the message was assigned to.
  • Enhancement: Always assign replies to a ticket number regardless of which email address the reply arrived from. This allows for users to send replies from any email address since many users today have multiple email - addresses.
    •  NOTE: Unrecognized email addresses will treat the reply as if its coming from the client/ticket creator. So if an AGENT uses an unrecognized email address it will show up as being from the customer instead.
  • Enhancement: Properly attribute emailed replies to the primary agent or the new agents in 3.6.0 of core (secondary or tertiary agents)
  • Enhancement: Properly attribute emailed replies to the the new "interested third parties" added in 3.6.0 of core
  • New: Uses a new capability to control who can see "unassigned" tickets (view_unassigned_tickets). Added by default to administrators only in core.
  • New: Fills in the channel field in the upcoming 4.0.0 version of Core.
  • New: Requires 4.0.0 of core to function
  • New: New filter to allow better access to the raw email.
  • New: Added support for the ticket lock feature in the forthcoming PRODUCTIVITY add-on.
  • New: Added new hook after data is saved - this will help to trigger notifications at the right time (when all data is saved instead of when only some is saved)
  • Tweak: Adjusted some logic so that emails can be sent out after all data is saved (including attachments)
  • Tweak: Added product name to license warning so user can tell which add-on is generating the warning.
  • Tweak: Some grammar changes

0.3.0

  • New: Support email attachments for incoming emails (finally!)
  • New: Add choice of wp-cron or "heartbeat" for scheduling email checks.
  • Tweak: added new interval for checking - 60 seconds.

0.2.7

  • Fix: Obscure Flourish bug that caused the auto-create user functionality to create users with the wrong email address.

0.2.6

  • Update: Clean up translation catalog, textdomains and add to POEDITOR.com
  • Update: Make the delimiter that shows where a reply starts and end translatable.
  • Fix: Force use of HTTPS when FORCE_SSL_ADMIN is set to true

0.2.5 - October 23rd, 2016

Better handling of replies to closed tickets. There are options now to reject replies sent to close tickets or to accept the reply and reopen the ticket.

0.2.4 - September 30th, 2016

The email support extension now has three options for handling unrecognized emails:

  1. Leave them in the unassigned folder like its done now
  2. Create a new ticket and, if necessary, a new user based on email address. Send new user link to reset password
  3. Create a new ticket if the email address is recognized; otherwise leave in the unassigned folder.

These new options are located in the TICKETS->SETUP->EMAIL PIPING tab

0.2.3 - August 8, 2016

  • Update incorrect link to addon settings page
  • Filter ID of the user returned for ticket association
  • Add new filters (ases_mailbox, ases_mailbox_protocols and ases_settings)

0.2.2 - May 31, 2016

  • Log raw content of the e-mail
  • Use the new Ajax users dropdown when AS is 3.3+
  • Replace deprecated function wpas_nonce_url()
  • Fix wrong link to licenses page

0.2.1 - November 11, 2015

  • Improvements
    • Display warning notice if fsockopen() is not enabled on the server
    • Only show e-mail fetch admin bar icon on admin
  • Bugfixes
    • Use the correct date and fate GMT for e-mail replies to avoid wrong chronological order
    • Remove double e-mail notification sent when a new reply is added

0.2.0 - October 5, 2915

  • New
    • Add manual email fetch in admin bar
    • Add connection test option
    • Add system tool to reset checking interval
  • Improvements
    • Use the e-mail date as the reply date instead of the current date
    • Display reply e-mail headers
  • Bugfix
    • Fix Ajax issue when e-mail check fails

0.1.3 - 2015.07.07

  • Improved
    • Load the addon core after it's loaded by Awesome Support
    • Hide license notification when the license is correctly entered
  • Fixed
    • Set the default agent to 1 as a fallback if no default assignee is found
    • Fix a few minor code errors

0.1.2 - 2015.04.13

  • Improved
    • Use the new addon loader to load safely
    • Link to settings tag in the plugin meta row
  •  Fix
    • Improved regex to capture e-mail subjects containing integers
    • Get e-mail HTML content, not only text
    • PHP notice on activation

0.1.1 - 2015.02.20

  • Fix the compatibility issue with PHP <5.5

0.1.0

  • First release