Set Up Your Support Email Address (Forwarding, Google Workspace, Microsoft 365)

With order-free support, customers can email your normal support address and their email lands as a conversation in the Message Centre in PortalX, even when it is not about a specific order. This article explains where to find your QrX support address, how to forward your own mailbox to it, and what happens to incoming email.

Who Can Use It

Order-free support is switched on per sales channel by QrX. If you do not see your channel in the list, contact QrX support and ask for order-free support on that channel.
To manage the settings you need the permission Manage support routing (Message Centre group under Settings > Roles & Permissions).
When QrX switches order-free support on for a channel, the administrators of your organization receive an email "Support email is ready" with the setup steps.

Where to Find Your QrX Support Address

Open the Message Centre and go to Support > Email.
Each sales channel with order-free support has its own QrX address, in the form <channel>[email protected].
Click Copy to copy the address.

Regenerate creates a new address for the channel. The old address stops working immediately, so update your forwarding right after you regenerate. Only regenerate when the address has been misused or leaked.

Setup Checklist

Support > Email shows a checklist for each channel so you can see what is still open:

Forward your support mailbox to the QrX address.
Set the Sender name customers see on your replies (by default the channel name).
Optionally send replies from your own domain (see "Send Replies from Your Own Domain Without Landing in Spam").
First email received: ticks off automatically when the first email arrives.

How Your Replies Look: Branded or Plain

For each sales channel you choose how replies from the Message Centre look in your customer's inbox. Open Support > Email, click Own domain (the pencil icon) on the channel, and on the Domain step choose the Email style. The change is saved at once.

Branded (default): replies use your Design Center email template.
Plain: replies look like a normal personal email: your text, your formatting and your signature, without a template.
Show conversation link (on by default): in plain emails, adds one small line under your reply with "View this conversation online" (the secure web page of the conversation) and a link to stop emails from this conversation. Switch it off to send only your text and signature. Customers can still unsubscribe through their email program.

In the Plain style and in the standard branded template, bold, italic, strikethrough and code formatting from your message is kept in the email.

Your Personal Signature

Click the pen icon (My signature) in the Message Centre header to write your signature. You can use formatting, links and images (https only), and see a preview.
Each user has one signature under All languages. With Add language you can write the same signature in other languages, for example Dutch and German. A reply uses the signature in the contact's language; contacts without a language, or in a language you did not add, get the All languages signature. Remove a language with the cross on its tab.
The signature is added under every reply you send by email, in both the Branded and the Plain style.
It is never added under notes, because notes are never emailed.
The signature can be up to 5,000 characters including formatting. Unsupported content (for example scripts) is removed when you save.

Forwarding from Google Workspace

The most reliable way is a Google Group that holds your support address and has the QrX address as a member:

Open the Google Admin console and go to Directory > Groups.
Create a group with your support address (for example [email protected]).
Set Access type to Custom.
In the row Who can post, tick External, so customers from outside your organization can send email to the group.
Tick Allow admins to add external members.
Add the QrX address as a member of the group.
If you do not want to receive a copy of every email yourself, set your own membership to No email.

Alternative: in the Admin console use Gmail > Routing > Recipient address map to map your support address to the QrX address.

Forwarding from Microsoft 365

Open the Exchange admin center.
Open the mailbox or shared mailbox of your support address.
Go to Mail flow settings > Email forwarding and forward to the QrX address. Instead, you can create a mail flow rule with the action Redirect the message to the QrX address.
Check your outbound anti-spam policy: it must allow automatic forwarding. Otherwise Microsoft 365 blocks the forwarded emails.

Other Email Providers

Most providers have a forwarding or alias setting for a mailbox. Forward all incoming email of your support address to the QrX address.

Test Your Setup

Use Send test email in the own-domain sheet (Forwarding step), or
Send an email to your support address yourself from another mailbox. It should appear as a new conversation in the Message Centre.

What Happens to Incoming Email

An email to the QrX address opens a conversation without an order and is routed to your support team.
The sender becomes an external participant in the conversation. They do not receive an invitation email; they simply get your replies by email.
Emails from spoofed senders (that fail SPF or DKIM checks) and spam go to Held email for review instead of your inbox.
Auto-replies (such as out-of-office messages) and bounces are ignored.
Limits: at most 5 new conversations per sender per hour and 60 per channel per hour. Anything above the limit goes to Held email.

Automatic Reply and Ticket Numbers for Support Emails

When a customer emails your support address, QrX can answer at once with one automatic reply, and every support conversation gets its own ticket number.

Switch the automatic reply on

Go to Settings > Message Centre > Support > Setup (you need the support routing permission).
Switch on Acknowledgement for support emails and press Save. It is off by default.
The reply is sent once per conversation, from your support sender, in the customer's language (detected from the email; English when the language is not supported). It says that the ticket was opened, repeats the ticket number and the subject, and asks the customer to reply to that email to add information.
No reply goes to no-reply mailboxes (noreply, do-not-reply, mailer, notifications, bounce), to automatic emails, bounces or out-of-office messages, or to a contact who unsubscribed or is suppressed. The reply is marked as automatic, so mail systems do not answer it.
The reply also appears in the conversation in the Message Centre, so your team sees what the customer received.

Ticket numbers

Every new support conversation (email, security alert) gets the next number of your organization, starting at the First ticket number (1000 unless you change it). You can change the first number only until the first ticket is numbered.
Prefix (1 to 12 characters, for example # or SHOP-) and Reference in email subjects decide how the number appears in the subject of every email of the conversation, for example Delivery question [#1000]. Choose No reference to keep subjects clean; the number still shows in the Message Centre.
In the inbox and the conversation header, a numbered conversation without an order shows its reference where the order number normally sits.
Conversations that existed before this feature keep no number.

Auto-reply rules and opening hours

Under Settings > Message Centre > Support > Auto-replies, set your Support opening hours: the time zone, the hours per day and closed dates such as holidays. Without hours your organization counts as always open (the hours of the team that handles the email apply instead).
Add auto-reply rules to answer with your own template instead of the standard text. A rule combines sender domains or addresses, contacts from your address book, sales channels, the customer's language, keywords in the subject or message, and time (inside or outside opening hours, weekend, closed date). Every filled-in condition must match; within a condition any value counts.
Rules are tried in order; the first matching rule sends its template in the customer's language (the template's default language otherwise). When no rule matches, the standard automatic reply goes out. A rule without conditions matches every email, so keep it last. A switched-off rule is skipped.
Templates are your organization or team templates from the Message Centre. Besides the usual variables they can use ticket.number, ticket.reference, ticket.subject, merchant.name and support.nextOpening (the next moment you open, in the customer's language). A template whose variable has no value, for example support.nextOpening while you are open, is skipped and the next rule applies.
Test shows which rule would answer an email with a given sender, subject, message and moment, with a preview of the text. Nothing is sent or saved.
The list shows how often each rule answered and when it was used last. Still one automatic reply per conversation; no-reply mailboxes, automatic emails and unsubscribed contacts never get one.

Common questions

The customer got no automatic reply. Check that the switch is on, that the email arrived in the Message Centre (not held for review), and that the sender is not a no-reply or automatic mailbox. A held email gets its reply when you release it.
The reply is in the wrong language. The language is detected from the first email; set the contact's language in the Message Centre to override it for the next replies.
Can I write my own text or reply differently per sender or outside opening hours? Yes: add an auto-reply rule under Support > Auto-replies with your template and the conditions (sender, keywords, outside opening hours or a closed date).

Common Problems

No conversation appears after a test email: check that forwarding is active, that the QrX address was copied exactly, and that you did not regenerate the address after setting up forwarding. With Microsoft 365, check the outbound anti-spam policy.
An email is missing: look in Held email. It may have failed the sender check or hit a limit.
Customers email in, but the channel is not listed in Support > Email: order-free support is not switched on for that channel yet.
My signature is missing in an email: signatures are only added to replies sent by email, never to notes. Check that you saved it under My signature.
The customer sees no "View this conversation online" line: the line is only added in the Plain style when Show conversation link is on.

When to Contact Our Support Team

Contact QrX support if you want order-free support switched on for a sales channel, if forwarded emails do not arrive although your forwarding is set up and tested, or if normal customer emails keep ending up in Held email.

If It Does Not Work

If customer emails still do not show up in the Message Centre, go through the step-by-step checklist in "My Support Email Does Not Arrive in the Message Centre: What to Check".