Table of Contents

Inbound Mailboxes Example Build

Jennifer Trower Updated by Jennifer Trower

Read Time: 4 mins

This article explains how to set up an inbound email account in Sonar to automatically convert emails into public support tickets. It also outlines the required settings and features that enhance ticketing communication.

Inbound email integration allows you to manage support requests more efficiently by automatically creating public tickets in Sonar from emails sent to a specific address. This feature ensures customer replies are tracked and responded to directly from Sonar’s ticketing system.

Replies vs. Comments
Replies: Sent from Sonar and emailed to the customer.
Comments: Internal notes not visible to or emailed to the customer.

How to Create an Inbound Mailbox

Before creating an inbound email account, make sure you have a valid outbound email domain set up under Settings -> Communications -> Email Domains. Only email addresses from this domain can be used to send ticket replies.

How It Works

When you create an inbound email account in Sonar, a unique forwarding address is generated (for example, something@sonarticketing.rocks). You then set your public-facing support email (like support@yourdomain.com) to forward incoming messages to this address. Sonar will use the configured "from" address to send replies and will automatically create tickets from emails sent to this inbox.

Inbound Mailbox Settings Overview

Navigate to Settings -> Ticketing -> Inbound Mailboxes, then click Create Inbound Mailbox.

When creating an inbound mailbox, you will be presented with a Create Inbound Mailbox screen that contains several fields that are required to be filled out before you can successfully create it. An overview of these fields and what they mean are below.

  1. Enabled: Enable this to start receiving emails.
  2. Name: Label for internal identification (for example, Support Tickets).
  3. From name: Name shown as the sender on ticket replies.
  4. From mailbox: The username part of the email (for example, "support").
  5. Email Domain ID: Domain part of the email (for example, "yourdomain.com"). There must be a valid outbound domain in Sonar.
  6. Priority: This determines the priority of the ticket created when email is received into this particular mailbox - choose ticket priority (Critical, High, Medium, Low).
  7. Ticket Group: Assign a default group for the tickets.
  8. Send auto reply: If this is enabled, an additional text box will appear where you can optionally send an automated confirmation email when a ticket is created.
  9. Append signature: If this checkbox is enabled, an additional text box will appear where you can set up a signature that will be appended to any responses to tickets that are sent out from this inbound mailbox.
    You can use [PUBLIC_NAME] to insert the agent’s name.
  10. Enable Slack integration: If using Slack, you can post ticket activity to a Slack channel via webhook. You can also pick to include the email body in these notifications. For more information on this, please refer to the Slack webhook documentation.

Inbound Mailbox Example Build

We are going to create an inbound mailbox for our incoming support tickets. First, we need to navigate to the Inbound Mailboxes page. This can be done by navigating to Settings -> Ticketing -> Inbound Mailboxes, then clicking Create Inbound Mailbox.

The Create Inbound Mailbox modal will appear once you click "Create Inbound Mailbox" and is where we will fill out all the necessary details for this mailbox.

We’ve filled out all the required fields for our new inbound mailbox. It’s currently enabled and named Inbound Support Tickets so our team can easily recognize its purpose.

The From Name is set to Sonar, and the Inbound Email ID is support@isp-portal.net. This works because we’ve already set up isp-portal.net as a valid outbound domain in Sonar.

We’ve set the default Priority to Low, allowing agents to adjust it later if needed. All tickets created from this inbox will go to the Support Ticket Group since they’ll handle these requests.

We’re not using the Slack integration right now, as our team actively monitors tickets. However, we may choose to enable it later.

We’ve added an auto reply to confirm receipt of the email and provide customers with a response timeline and alternate contact option. Our signature uses the [PUBLIC_NAME] field to show the name of the replying agent, followed by Sonar Support and our support phone number.

After reviewing all fields, we click Create. The mailbox is now active and appears in the Inbound Mailboxes list, ready to receive emails.

Be sure to add the generated @sonarticketing.rocks email (found in the Inbound Mailbox column) as a forwarding address in your domain settings. This ensures emails are delivered to your Sonar instance.

Once your inbound email account is created, you can view, edit, or delete it from the same screen using the Edit menu next to the mailbox.

How did we do?

How to Integrate Inbound Mailboxes with Slack

Ticket Categories: Overview

Contact