The main channel of communication with the customers is often email. An organization consists of multiple department or teams. Email addresses differ for each group which is servicing your customer. You may have the following:
support@example.orghr@exapmle.orgsales@example.orgThese addresses are just some examples, and you may have many more. You use these channels to receive and send messages, and in mail clients, one can often send with the wrong address.
OTRS manages as many email addresses for your teams as needed. All your email addresses, whether for sending or receiving, are kept and configured nicely in one place. In the Queue Settings, the correct address is always chosen preventing that someone working in multiple roles sends an email out with the wrong account.
To enable OTRS to send emails, you need a valid email address to be used by the system. OTRS is capable of working with multiple email addresses, since many support installations need to use more than one. A queue can be linked to many email addresses, and vice versa. The address used for outgoing messages from a queue can be set when the queue is created.
Use this screen to add system email addresses to the system. An email address is already added to the system at installation time of OTRS. The email address management screen is available in the Email Addresses module of the Communication & Notifications group.
Manage Email Addresses
To add an email address:
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Click on the Add System Address button in the left sidebar.
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Fill in the required fields.
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Click on the Save button.
Warning
Email addresses can not be deleted from the system. They can only be deactivated by setting the Validity option to invalid or invalid-temporarily.
Note
Once an email address is added and set to valid, OTRS cannot send an email to this address. This prevents loopbacks which could crash your system. If you need to transfer information between departments please use the split article action. This will allow you to create a new ticket to another team for assigning a task, for example.
To edit an email address:
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Click on an email address in the list of email addresses.
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Modify the fields.
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Click on the Save or Save and finish button.
Note
If several email addresses are added to the system, use the filter box to find a particular email address by just typing the name to filter.
Email Address Settings
The following settings are available when adding or editing this resource. The fields marked with an asterisk are mandatory.
- Email address *
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The email address to be added.
- Display name *
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The name of this resource. Any type of characters can be entered to this field including uppercase letters and spaces. The name will be displayed in the sender information of the article.
- Queue *
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The queue, to which the email address will be added as default email address.
Note
This setting will apply if the email is distributed via the recipient address. This setting can be overridden by Postmaster Filters or in the Mail Account Settings when Dispatching by selected Queue is chosen.
- Validity *
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Set the validity of this resource. Each resource can be used in OTRS only, if this field is set to valid. Setting this field to invalid or invalid-temporarily will disable the use of the resource.
Note
An email address can only be set to invalid or invalid-temporarily, if it is not assigned to any queue.
- Comment
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Add additional information to this resource. It is recommended to always fill this field as a description of the resource with a full sentence for better clarity, because the comment will be also displayed in the overview table.
Setting up Outgoing Emails
For outgoing emails, OTRS can be configured in a variety of ways. The best option to do this might depend on your specific circumstances.
Sending Mails via Local MTA
Using a local mail transfer agent (MTA) to send mails directly or relay mails to a smart host is the recommended option. It provides local mail queuing in the case of network connectivity issues and provides you with the capability to authenticate against multiple outgoing mail accounts or accounts using other than basic authentication methods.
A default setup could use the Sendmail binary and Postfix.
Sending emails via SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) relay via a smart host can be used in case you are using another mail server in your network, or on the internet. Your local MTA must be configured with the credentials for authentication and the target MTA must allow the user to send mails as other users of the domain.
Sending emails in the name of another domain requires either a sender policy framework (SPF) record, allowing the local server to send as the user, or in the case that the local mail server should act as the mail server for a target domain, mail exchange resource record (MX) and domain name service (DNS) C-name records for the local server are required. The MTA must, in both cases, be correctly configured to send as the target domain.
Note
An SPF record is not necessarily required. However, if the sender domain has an SPF record set, the MTA’s IP address must be listed in it, otherwise the SPF check will fail. Alternatively, you can send outbound mails to a relay host, and in that case the relay’s IP address must be listed in the SPF record of the sender domain. If the sender domain has no SPF record, there is nothing wrong with the OTRS MTA delivering outbound mails directly.
Sending Mails via External Email Provider
Alternatively, it is also possible to use an external email provider for outgoing emails.
Note
This feature is only available to On-Premise customers. If you are a Managed customer, this feature is taken care of by the Customer Solutions Team in OTRS. Please contact us via support@otrs.com or in the OTRS Portal.
Warning
Using Smarthost (sender relay host) is deprecated for new Managed customers since September 1, 2022. All existing instances will be modified until July 1, 2023.
To setup the system to use Office 365 as email provider:
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Read the POP, IMAP, and SMTP settings for Outlook.com and Add your Outlook.com account to another mail app or smart device chapters in the official documentation.
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Copy the one-time application password shown in the administrator area of Office 365.
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Go to the System Configuration screen of OTRS and add the following settings:
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SendmailModule→Kernel::System::Email::SMTPTLS -
SendmailModule::AuthPassword→ the application password from Office 365 -
SendmailModule::AuthUser→ email-address@company.tld -
SendmailModule::Host→ SMTP.office365.com -
SendmailModule::Port→ 587
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To setup the system to use Gmail as email provider:
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Read the Send email from a printer, scanner, or app chapter in the official Help Center.
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Go to the System Configuration screen of OTRS and add the following settings:
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SendmailModule→Kernel::System::Email::SMTPTLS -
SendmailModule::AuthPassword→ your email password -
SendmailModule::AuthUser→ email-address@company.tld -
SendmailModule::Host→ smtp-relay.gmail.com -
SendmailModule::Port→ 587
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To setup the system to use another external email provider:
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Read the official documentation of the external provider.
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Go to the System Configuration screen of OTRS and add the following settings:
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SendmailModule→Kernel::System::Email::SMTPTLS -
SendmailModule::AuthPassword→ your email password -
SendmailModule::AuthUser→ your email address or username -
SendmailModule::Host→ the SMTP address of the external provider -
SendmailModule::Port→ the port for the SMTP server
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See also
You can find detailed instructions in the PostMaster Mail Accounts chapter about how to configure incoming emails.
