Email intake

Email intake turns incoming mail into work items. Customers can send a request by email, and their replies stay on the same ticket.

Email intake uses two objects:

A mailbox does not route mail. Routing lives on the intake. One mailbox can feed several intakes, but only through distinct folders.

Before you start

Collect these items:

• The mailbox address and its credentials.
• For OAuth, an app registration in the Microsoft or Google console.
• A workspace and an item type for the routing.
• A portal, if customers must see the requests.

Create the mailbox

1. Open Admin and select Channels.
2. Select Create Channel.
3. Enter a channel name.
4. Select the Email type.
5. Select a category and enter a description. Both steps are optional.
6. Select Create Channel.

Configure the connection

1. Open the email channel and select the Configuration tab.
2. In Email Configuration, select an authentication method.

Basic IMAP

1. Select Basic IMAP.
2. Enter the IMAP Host and the Port.
3. Select the Encryption.
4. Enter the Username and the Password.
5. Select Save.

OAuth

1. Select OAuth.
2. Select the provider, Microsoft 365 or Google.
3. Enter the Client ID, the Client Secret, and the Tenant ID.
4. Copy the Redirect URI into the provider console.
5. Select Save settings, then connect your mailbox.
6. Select Connect Mailbox and complete the authorization in the provider window.
7. Confirm that the status shows Connected.

The Tenant ID value common allows any Microsoft account. Enter a specific tenant ID to limit the connection to one tenant.

Set the processing behavior

In Processing Options, select the After processing action:

Delete removes the message from the mailbox. Use it only when another system keeps a copy.

Add an intake

1. In the same Configuration tab, find the Intakes section.
2. Select Add intake.
3. Enter the Folder to poll. The default is INBOX.
4. Select the Portal, or select Internal (no portal).
5. Select the Workspace.
6. Select the Item Type.
7. Enter the rate limit, or leave it empty for the default of 100.
8. Select the Status.
9. Select Save.

When the intake targets a portal, Windshift adds the portal's system Email request type. The request type marks the mail that arrived by email. See Request types.

Connect the portal

The link lives on the intake. To connect a portal:

1. Open the intake and select the portal as the Portal target.
2. Confirm the workspace is one the portal serves.
3. Open the portal channel and select the Configuration tab.
4. Under Connected Intake Mailboxes, confirm the mailbox appears.

The portal shows the linked mailboxes read-only.

Enable the channel

1. In the Configuration tab, turn on Enable Email Channel.
2. Windshift polls every enabled mailbox on a five-minute tick.

Test the intake

1. Send an email to the mailbox address.
2. Wait for the next poll.
3. Open the target workspace and confirm the new work item.
4. If the intake links a portal, sign in to the portal as the sender and confirm the request appears in My Requests.
5. Reply to the notification email and confirm the reply appears on the ticket.

Troubleshoot

The conversation loop

Email and portal conversations share one thread:

• A portal submission can email the customer.
• A customer reply to that email threads back onto the same ticket.
• A customer reply always lands on the ticket, whichever channel the reply arrived on.
• A fresh email from a sender with open tickets does not duplicate the request when duplicate continuation is on.

Duplicate continuation is opt-in. When it is on, Windshift appends a fresh email to the most recent open ticket from the same sender in the intake workspace. This applies only when the sender created the ticket or previously participated by email. A closed ticket or a ticket in another workspace never qualifies. Cross-workspace duplicates appear to agents as possible duplicates on the ticket for a manual merge.

Rate limiting

An intake caps new tickets for each sender in a rolling hour. The default is 100. A value of 0 disables the cap.

A declined message:

• Creates no ticket.
• Appears in the processing log.
• Stays unread and undeleted.
• Does not stop the intake.

Operators recover held-back mail with Requeue and retry after they raise the limit. Requeueing only re-reads the mailbox, so no message is lost and Windshift does not duplicate a message.

Outbound replies

When an agent comments on a ticket with a portal customer as the requester, Windshift queues a threaded email reply.

The Customer replies tab shows the outbound queue with the recipient, subject, attempt count, next attempt, and the last error. Message bodies are never shown.

Operators can:

• Retry now to clear the backoff and send immediately.
• Discard to stop retries permanently. The row stays for audit.

Processing log

The processing log lists each message with the sender, the subject, and the outcome. The log shows the channel health:

• Last check time.
• Error count and last error.
• Watermark.
• Rate-limited count.

Message bodies are never exposed in the log. Channel managers without item-view on the target workspace see redacted rows.

Auto-created customers

The sender of an inbound email becomes a portal customer on first contact. Windshift creates the customer so replies can thread back to the sender. The customer record records the creation provenance as email-intake.

Publish a privacy notice on the portal that explains that emailing support creates a contact record. Review auto-created customers on a schedule and clean them up in bulk. See Customers and organisations.