Set up the email channel

Route support email into conversations, set sending addresses, verify your sending domain, configure spam filtering, and learn how inbound email is matched to contacts.

The email channel turns support email into conversations in your inbox, so a reply from the inbox and a reply from the customer's mailbox land in the same thread. This article covers inbound routing, sending addresses, domain verification, spam filtering, and how Quackback decides which contact an email belongs to.

Configure email in Settings > Support > Channels > Email.

Inbound route

Your workspace has its own inbound address. The Inbound route card shows it ("Email to ... becomes a conversation").

In Forwarding address, enter the address customers write to, for example [email protected], and click Set route.
In your email provider, forward that mailbox to the inbound address shown on the card.

Each message that arrives becomes a new conversation, or threads into an existing one, and a contact is created if the sender is new.

Note: Self-hosted installs that cannot receive inbound webhooks can poll a mailbox instead. See Receive email over IMAP.

The Transport card shows how conversation email is sent and received. On a self-hosted install it reflects the server's environment variables.

Sending addresses

Set the From address outbound replies use for each area: Support, Feedback, and Changelog. A support reply and a changelog announcement can then come from different addresses. You can also set an SMTP override on a sending address to send through your own mail server.

Sending domains

Add and verify the domain you send from so mail lands in inboxes instead of spam. Quackback lists the DNS records to publish, each labeled with its purpose, such as proving you own the domain, signing your mail (DKIM), and aligning SPF with your domain.

Add your domain under Sending domains.
Publish the listed records at your DNS provider.
Click verify. The check is a live DNS lookup, so the only wait is DNS propagation.

Tip: If verification fails right after you add the records, wait a few minutes for DNS to propagate and try again.

Spam filter and trusted senders

Inbound mail passes sender checks that do not need AI. Any address or domain on your Trusted senders list skips spam checks entirely.

When an AI model is configured, the AI spam filter switch also checks new email and Messenger conversations and moves obvious spam to Spam in the inbox. Filed spam is deleted after 30 days.

New workspaces start with the AI spam filter on.
Workspaces upgraded from 0.13 start with it off. Turn it on here if you want it.

Turning it off stops the model call. Trusted senders and the other sender checks keep working.

Auto-acknowledgement

Turn on Acknowledge new inbound mail to send a short confirmation when a new inbound email opens a conversation. It is never sent in reply to automated mail, mailing lists, or your own addresses.

The Email activity card lists recent sent and received mail, which helps when you are checking whether a message arrived.

How contacts are matched

A contact is keyed by email address. Anyone can forge the From address on an email, so before Quackback attaches a new inbound message to an existing contact, it checks whether the sending domain authenticated the message with DMARC:

DMARC pass: the message is trusted. If the address matches an existing contact, the conversation attaches to that contact. A new address creates a new contact.
Anything weaker than a pass (no DMARC record, a policy of quarantine or none, or an unreadable result): a new contact is created and marked unverified. Even if the address matches an existing contact, Quackback does not attach the message to that identity.
A hard DMARC failure under a reject policy: the message is held in Spam instead of reaching the inbox, so a teammate can review and release it.

This means two messages from the same address can end up on different contacts when the sender's domain does not pass DMARC. If a customer's mail keeps arriving as unverified, ask them to check their domain's DMARC setup.

Note: These checks apply only to new inbound mail. Replies inside an existing conversation are matched by that conversation's own reply address.

Mail from a sender your workspace has blocked is dropped.