Forward Emails to Tidio (Helpdesk)

At Tidio, you can automatically forward emails from other mailing providers directly to the Tidio panel. With this Helpdesk 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 Helpdesk tool in general, head over to this detailed article.

In this article, you'll learn:

• How to forward emails to Tidio from the most common email providers
• How to cancel email forwarding
• How to troubleshoot common forwarding issues

Adding a Mailbox to Tidio

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

... and click on the blue Connect mailbox button:

In the popup window, you'll see two options available to choose from: connecting an existing email, or creating a new address (using the Tidio domain).

Connect with your existing email 

Use this option when you want to forward emails from your existing email address. You will be able to type in your email address in the field below.

Click Next to get to the second step, where you will see detailed instructions for connecting your existing mailbox. You can choose from different sets of instructions, depending on what you need:

Selecting one of the listed options will give you step-by-step instructions on connecting your mailbox. If you're not using Gmail, Google Apps, Outlook, or Office 365 - select Other mailbox provider. This will simply provide you with your Tidio forwarding address immediately:

As with Gmail or Outlook, you will need to use this unique forwarding address in your mailbox configuration. 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.

Create a new email 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 domain @tidio.xyz. You will be able to type in the alias only.

Once you hit Next, you will see your newly-created address listed in the Mailbox tab, and verified for use right away:

To learn more about Tidio's Helpdesk overall, head over to this detailed article.

Cancel Email Forwarding 

Go to the Settings > Helpdesk in your Tidio panel to cancel email forwarding. On the far right of the mailbox you want to disconnect - hit the Delete button: 

Confirm your choice, and your mailbox will be removed from the panel. Please note: this alone does not disable forwarding!

To disable forwarding completely, you need to remove your unique Tidio forwarding address from your external mailbox settings (e.g. in Gmail, Outlook, or other). The steps towards this are slightly different for each provider.

Gmail

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:

Select the Gear icon from the top-right corner of your Inbox and choose Options.

From the Options page, open the Forwarding tab in the Account section.

Select the Stop forwarding option and click Save.

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 their Helpdesk.

Tidio confirmation 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 first add your Tidio forwarding address to your mailbox settings, a confirmation email is automatically 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 initial confirmation 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 confirmation 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 Helpdesk 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!