Set up email forwarding

How to set up forwarding

Step 1: Navigate to Configuration->Email->Mail accounts and click on Add email account button.

Step 2: From the mail account option list, select Other method and select Forwarding option.

Step 3: Setup actual email forwarding on your mail server so all incoming emails to your mail account that you want to integrate with LiveAgent are forwarded to your LiveAgent built-in email support@mail."yourdomainname".ladesk.com. If you are not sure how to do that, please contact your server admin or your server hosting company to set up such mail forwarding for you.

Step 4: Choose the Send type. At this step you need to decide whether you'd want to use our servers to send out the emails or your own SMTP to send out the emails. It is recommended that you use your own SMTP since our servers might get blacklisted by some providers due to the amount of emails we send. If you should decide to go with our servers you'll need to setup the SPF records on your mail account domain.

Step 5: Once you are done with the setup click the Save button and the system will try to send out a test mail to the email address you are adding using the settings you've selected and will test whether it gets forwarded back to LiveAgent.

How to set up SPF DNS record

Setup a SPF record in your domain's DNS settings, specifically TXT record. This record handles that your email replies to customers from your LiveAgent can be sent from your own mail account address without being recognized as spam. How to add the SPF record differs based on whether you already have some v=spf1 record set for your domain already or not. If you don't have any other SPF record configured for your domain in your domain management panel, then you have to create a new TXT record:

v=spf1 redirect=_spf.ladesk.com

If you already have some SPF record created in your domain management panel, for example your current SPF looks like this:

v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.websupport.sk ?all

then you need to append LiveAgent record with INCLUDE instead of REDIRECT so your existing record ends up looking like this:

v=spf1 a mx include:_spf.websupport.sk include:_spf.ladesk.com ?all

If you are not sure where or how to create these SPF records, please contact your server admin or your server hosting company to set it up for you. After it's set, you can check whether the SPF record is set correctly with an online DNS checker tool, for example: https://www.whatsmydns.net/#TXT/ where you enter your domain name, hit search and see whether in the records over different geographical locations you see the correct SPF record including ladesk.com info added to it.

Troubleshooting

After clicking the Save button. LiveAgent will check if the SPF record is set properly. If the SPF record check passes, LiveAgent also sends a test email to your mail server to see if it's properly forwarded back to your LiveAgent integrated email account. to check if your mail server forwards it back properly. If both these tests are successful, you will see a success message and from that moment, mail forwarding is active. You may experience two possible problems during these tests:

  1. Invalid txt dns record error message.
    This error message means the SPF record is not set up properly or the record changes are not yet propagated. It may take some time(usually less than one hour) until your record changes are actually applied on your mail server. If you are sure the SPF record is set properly, we suggest you to wait one hour and try to set up forwarding again. (If you are 100% sure the SPF record is set properly and it's only a matter of propagation please click on Activate anyway button which will be visible next to the Save button. This will activate LiveAgent forwarding even if these tests are not successful.) If you are getting the same error even after one hour since you set the SPF record on your domain, the record is most likely not set up properly. In that case please contact your hosting company or contact our support to help you with it.

  2. Test email is not received.
    This test can take up to one minute to complete. If the test email is not received within this one minute, you will get this error message. This may actually mean two things:

    1. It takes more than one minute for your mail server to actually forward the test email back to LiveAgent or your mail server thinks this test email is Spam and don't forward it because of that. If you are sure the forwarding works properly please click on Activate anyway button which will be visible next to the Save button. This will activate LiveAgent forwarding even if this forwarding email test is not successful.
    2. The actual forwarding of all emails received by your mail account to your LiveAgent integrated email account support@mail."yourdomainname".ladesk.com is not working. In that case please contact your server admin or your hosting company to check the problem for you.