Product Area:
Side Conversations (Email)
Description trying to solve:
Currently, for side conversations, emails are sent from the support address associated with the ticket (or the brand’s support address). Even when brands are not used, the “From” address is tied to the ticket’s original support/received address. We need the ability to independently define the “From” address for side conversations—regardless of the ticket’s recipient/support-address or brand assignment. For example: we may want all side-conversation notifications to come from “escalations@ourcompany.com” irrespective of how the ticket arrived. At present this is not possible via the UI or via the available apps (e.g., the “Select an Address” app does not apply specifically to side conversations).
How we would like the product to work:
- Under Admin → Side Conversations settings, Email add a new configurable field: “Default side conversation sender address”.
- The field allows the admin to choose one of the verified support addresses or add a new alias (if permitted).
- Once set, all side-conversation emails (internal or external participants) will be sent from this configured address, regardless of which support address the ticket was received at or which brand (if any) is assigned.
- Optionally: allow per-ticket override (via a dropdown or API) so that for some side-conversations a different sender address may be selected if needed.
- Ensure responses and replies to that side-conversation remain consistent (so that replies still route correctly into Zendesk and don’t break threading or create ghost tickets).
- Update documentation accordingly: the “About side conversations” article should reflect how the admin-defined sender address will be used.
Why is this important? (Business impact)
- Brand-consistency: For many organisations, side conversations are used to coordinate with third-party stakeholders (vendors, partners, legal) and they must appear from a specific address for compliance, partner expectations or audit trails.
- Outbound only customer notifications: Many organisations — especially in banking and finance — treat email as a less secure or non-interactive channel for customer-facing communications. They therefore prefer to use email only to send out notifications (from a “noreply” address) and direct customers back to a secure logged-in session (via a help-centre, portal or web-form) to view or respond. Being able to specify a dedicated sender address for email side-conversations is required in order to ensuring consistent communication flow via e-mail for both external and internal stakeholders.
- Sender-address control: Without this flexibility, organisations have to ensure all tickets arrive at a specific support address (or use workaround routing) just so side-conversations appear correctly. This adds operational complexity and risk of inconsistent “From” addresses.
- Avoid confusion / improve deliverability: If side conversation notifications come from a variety of addresses (depending on the ticket’s support address), recipients may not recognize the sender or may filter the email into spam/unexpected folders. A consistent dedicated “From” address helps avoid that.
- Future-proofing: As side-conversations become more widely used (for external partners, vendor management, escalations), the ability to govern the sender identity becomes a control/branding requirement.
Are there any additional details, mock-ups, or constraints?
- No specific mock-up is attached, but the UI would only involve adding a drop-down for selection, and a check-box for activation / de-activation.
- Constraint: the chosen “From” address must be a verified support address alias in Zendesk (to preserve routing/replies into ticket).
- Constraint: Changing the default should trigger a change for future side-conversations; existing side-conversations would not retroactively change the sender.
Table of desired behaviour:
Ticket received at | Current “From” for side-conversation | Desired “From” when feature enabled
support@company.com support@company.com escalation@company.com
help@company.com help@company.com escalation@company.com
Thank you for your consideration.
We believe this enhancement will significantly improve flexibility and control for organisations using side-conversations in Zendesk Support. We look forward to seeing this added to the roadmap.
