Forward emails to Tidio

At Tidio, you can automatically forward emails from other mailing providers directly to the Tidio panel. With this feature, you can receive all your incoming emails inside Tidio, as tickets - and manage them through the Tickets folder.

If you want to learn more about our Ticketing tool in general, head over to this detailed article.

In this article, you'll learn:

• The benefits of using Ticketing
• How to forward emails to Tidio from the most common email providers
• How to complete the setup (adding your business domain and sender address)
• How to cancel email forwarding
• How to troubleshoot common forwarding issues

Ticketing benefits

Manage your time

Move time-consuming conversations to tickets to save the efforts of handling complaints, queries, and requests via chats. Change tickets' statuses and keep your inbox squeaky clean.

Create an omnichannel support

Offer your customers more ways to interact with you. Omnichannel support connects the experiences across different channels, making the customer experience completely seamless. 

Set priorities for your tickets

Mark your tickets as Low, Normal or High priority, so your team knows what to handle first.

Cooperate with your colleagues

Assign the tickets to the team members who are best-suited to handle them. For example, a ticket with pricing questions can be assigned to an agent with relevant sales expertise. Create a team of ticket owners responsible for resolving them in the shortest turnaround time. 

Add notes and tags to improve communication 

Help your coworkers out by leaving notes regarding each ticket, as well as tagging your tickets with useful information.

Adding your mailbox to Tidio

In general, completing your setup requires 3 different steps:

1. Connecting your mailbox (or several mailboxes)
2. Connecting your own business domain
3. Setting a proper sender address (which uses your connected domain)

This will ensure you (and your customers!) enjoy the full benefit of Ticketing experience.

Please see the instructions for connecting your mailbox below. See this next section of our guide to learn about business domain connection and the sender address.

You can add your external mailbox (or multiple mailboxes) by heading to the Settings > Email section in your Tidio admin panel:

... and by clicking on one of the blue Connect mailbox buttons:

You will see the Choose your mailbox provider pop-up with four options to choose from: Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, Other provider, or I want to create a new Tidio address (located in the form of a link at the bottom):

Gmail

This option allows you to use an existing Gmail or Google Workspace mailbox that you have access to - this integration doesn't require any actual setting up. Just select the Gmail option ("Connect Gmail or Google workspace mailbox") and follow the steps in the Google window that opens: sign into your Google account (or select one of the accounts you're already signed into), and confirm:

Once you finish these steps via Gmail, Tidio shows the Your mailbox is connected window (hit Go to Inbox to see your tickets), and you will see your mailbox listed in the Mailbox tab, verified for use right away:

Microsoft Outlook

This option allows you to connect your existing Outlook mailbox with Tidio, but it's not an instant integration; you need to follow several steps. Select Microsoft Outlook, type in your Outlook email address and hit Next. In the Set up email forwarding step, Tidio will show you the instructions below, together with your unique Tidio forwarding address to copy.

Select the Gear icon from the top-right corner of your Outlook email dashboard:

Other provider

Use this option when you want to forward emails from your existing email address. Type in your email address and hit Next:

In the next step (Set up email forwarding), you will get your unique Tidio forwarding address to copy, and the View mailbox connection instructions link to our guides:

You will need to use this unique forwarding address in your mailbox's forwarding settings, and then hit Send test email (see below). Once you've done that properly, the newly added mailbox will become verified inside the Mailbox tab, and all your incoming emails will start appearing inside Tidio's Tickets folder.

Checking your connection with a test email

With the Microsoft Outlook and Other provider options, the last step of the setup says "Use the button below to send a test email." Once your forwarding rule is saved in your mailbox, hit Send test email. Tidio sends a test email to your mailbox, which your mailbox should forward to Tidio - and you will see the Check your Tidio Inbox window:

Click on Go to Inbox and open the test email in your tickets to confirm everything works as expected. Don't see the email? The forwarding rule might not be set up correctly - click on Go back to instructions, double-check your mailbox's forwarding settings, and use the Retry verification button to send another test email.

Create a new Tidio address

Use this option only when you don't have an email address or when you want to create a new email address with Tidio, specifically for the purpose of forwarding only. This email address will be using the @tidio.xyz domain. You will be able to type in the alias only:

Once you hit Send test email, Tidio creates the address and shows the Your mailbox is connected window. You will see your newly-created address listed in the Mailbox tab, and verified for use right away.

To learn more about Tidio's Ticketing overall, head over to this detailed article that covers all of its aspects.

Connect your domain and add a sender address

Apart from connecting your mailbox (or several mailboxes) in order to receive incoming emails in Tidio, it's important to complete your setup by adding your business domain as well as your sender address.

These two steps will let you benefit from Ticketing fully, as your ticket responses will enjoy better deliverability in addition to looking more professional.

• To connect your own domain, please see this separate guide.
• To learn about configuring your sender address, please see this section of our general Ticketing guide.

Cancel email forwarding 

Go to the Settings > Email > Mailbox section in your Tidio panel to cancel email forwarding. On the far right of the mailbox you want to disconnect - hit the trash icon (Delete):

Tidio will ask: Are you sure you want to remove this mailbox? You won't be able to manage messages or send tickets from that address in your Tidio Inbox anymore, and the change might impact your SLA policies. You can tell us the reason for the removal (optional), and then confirm with Yes, delete:

Your mailbox will be removed from the panel.

Please note: if you've added your mailbox to Tidio with the Microsoft Outlook or Other provider option, deleting the mailbox alone does not disable forwarding! Removing the mailbox from the list will only disable forwarding immediately if you used the Gmail option, or created a new address with I want to create a new Tidio address.

To disable forwarding completely, you need to remove your unique Tidio forwarding address from your external mailbox settings. The steps towards this are slightly different for each provider.

Gmail

Please note that if you've used the dedicated Gmail integration option, all you need to do is remove it in Settings > Email > Mailbox, as described above - and the integration will be disabled. However, if you've integrated your mailbox by manually placing the Tidio forwarding address into Gmail's forwarding settings (with the Other provider option), then you will need to find that address and remove it as well. Follow the steps below to achieve that.

Log into your mailbox, click on the Gear icon in the dashboard, and select Settings.   

Choose the Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and select the Disable forwarding option, which will affect the email address you had added previously.

Outlook.com and Office 365:

Simply removing your mailbox from Settings > Email > Mailbox in Tidio is not enough to stop the integration; you also need to disable (or remove) your Tidio forwarding rule from your Outlook email settings as well.

To do so, click on the gear icon in the top-right to access Settings. Head to Email > Rules, and disable (or remove) the Tidio forwarding rule you've created:

Other email providers

Locate your forwarding settings and remove your unique @tidioreply.com email address from the configuration.

Troubleshooting forwarding issues

Below we address some common issues that users have experienced when setting up Ticketing.

Tidio test email appears in mailbox, but not in Tidio panel

This is quite common when connecting Outlook, but may take place with some other providers as well.

When you hit Send test email at the end of the setup (or Retry verification later on), a test email is sent from Tidio. It should arrive in your newly connected mailbox (e.g. in Outlook), and a forwarded copy should also appear in your Tidio tickets inbox, confirming that the connection is working. In some cases, you might not see this email inside the Tidio panel. If you're sure that you've set up the Tidio forwarding address correctly in your mailbox, this issue may be addressed as follows:

1. The forwarding is actually done and working correctly, but the test email hasn't been forwarded. You can test this by sending an email to your newly-connected mailbox; if it reaches both your mailbox and your Tidio panel, everything should be fine!
2. The test email has been forwarded to the Tidio panel, but may have been marked as spam for some reason; in this case, navigate to the Spam folder in your Tidio Inbox and see if the message is there. You can mark it as non-spam once you find it.

Outlook removes forwarding settings; mailbox remains unverified in Tidio

Some Outlook users may experience a bug where Outlook clears any forwarding settings that have recently been set up. This can result in the newly-added mailbox to be unverified in your Email settings.

While we cannot affect Outlook itself, we recommend a workaround that seems to fix this issue: instead of setting up the forwarding via browser, try the Outlook desktop app. When saving the configuration there, the forwarding settings aren't removed and your mailbox should be verified in your Tidio panel!

Mailbox shows as Unverified

If a mailbox in Settings > Email > Mailbox has the Unverified status, its forwarding hasn't been confirmed yet. Click on Open instructions next to the status:

This reopens the Set up email forwarding steps for that mailbox, with your Tidio forwarding address. Once you've checked (or fixed) the forwarding settings in your mailbox, hit Retry verification to send a new test email.

Further reading

• Connect Gmail with one click
• Ticketing - a quick setup
• Email (Ticketing)
• Use your own Domain for tickets