Skip to content

Email as a support channel

The widget is one way into a conversation — not the only one. Turn on Email channel and visitors can email a workspace address; each thread becomes a normal support chat. Your bot answers first, your team can take over from Chats (or the mobile app), and every assistant or operator reply goes back as email in the same thread.

Email has its own page in the settings rail: Install → Email. It carries the whole setup in four steps, plus a Setup check at the top that reads real state rather than a saved flag — so it tells you what is actually working, not what someone once ticked.

Each row is either done, waiting, or blocking, and rows marked vroxy are ours to fix rather than yours (an inbound mailbox, outbound SMTP, the platform switch). What it looks at:

  • Email accepted on the platform, and in this workspace.
  • That Vroxy is watching a mailbox on the inbound domain at all.
  • Whether a first email has actually arrived — the only honest proof that a forward works.
  • That Vroxy can send, and which address replies come from.
  • Whether a reply has gone back out by email, which closes the round trip.

A pending row is not an outage: an unverified custom sender, or a workspace that has not been emailed yet, still leaves the channel working.

Email → 1. Turn it on → Accept support email. You need settings.write (admin or owner).

Step 2 shows the inbound address for this workspace. It looks like:

support+<secret>@inbound.example.com

Forward your existing support mailbox there, or publish the address on your help site. You do not configure IMAP — Vroxy watches a catch-all on that domain and routes by the secret after the +. The secret is not your public workspace id; rotate it from that page if it leaks (old forwards stop working).

Off by default. A workspace that only uses the widget can leave it off.

If you gave Vroxy your domain (in the create-workspace wizard, or Your domain on the Embed page), [email protected] is already filled in here — saved but unverified, so nothing sends from it yet. Finish it by publishing the DNS records below.

By default replies come from the inbound address above. To answer as your own support address instead, fill in 3. Reply from your own address — [email protected] — plus an optional sender name, then press Save and verify this domain.

Vroxy shows three CNAME records to publish on that domain’s DNS. They are DKIM keys: they let our mail servers sign messages as your domain, so your customer’s mail provider trusts the reply instead of filing it as a spoof. Publish them, press Check verification, and the card flips to Verified.

Two things worth knowing:

  • Until the domain verifies, replies keep coming from the vroxy address. Sending as an unverified domain would fail your own DMARC policy, and a reply in the customer’s spam folder is worse than a reply from an address they do not recognise.
  • Keep forwarding your address here. The reply’s Reply-To is your address, so that forward is how the customer’s answer gets back into the conversation — the same forward that started it.

Changing to another mailbox on a verified domain (support@ → help@) keeps the verification. A different domain starts over. If the DNS records are removed later, the next check drops the verification and replies fall back to the vroxy address.

An email conversation is a SupportChat like any other:

  • It appears on Chats with an Email badge and the subject line.
  • Handling mode, handoff, labels, CSAT, and evaluation all apply.
  • The visitor is keyed by their From address (name and email show on the chat).
  • Replies from the bot or an operator are sent back with proper threading headers, so the customer’s mail client keeps one thread.

Notes you leave for yourself in the transcript stay in the workspace — they are not emailed.

  1. They send mail to your workspace address.
  2. Vroxy opens (or continues) a conversation and the bot answers when it is in bot mode.
  3. If they reply to that email, the reply appends to the same chat.
  4. When you take over from Chats, further replies go out as email from the same address — your own support address once its domain is verified, otherwise the vroxy inbound address.

Attachments on email are not part of the first release — plain text (and a text extract of HTML) is what lands in the transcript today.

New workspaces see Turn on email support on the dashboard Getting started checklist (next to embed, branding, and docs). It links straight to the Email page, and ticks once the workspace toggle is on; the Setup check there carries the rest. Hide the whole checklist if email is not part of your launch.