Email support

Point an existing shared inbox at a Ravenna channel: enable inbound email, forward from Google or Microsoft, configure outbound replies, and handle guests.

Most teams already have a it@ or people@ inbox that nobody enjoys owning. This playbook points it at Ravenna without changing the address anyone has memorized, so email becomes just another way requests reach the same channel, agent, and workflows.

Prerequisites: a channel that is already receiving requests, from the Day one track. Email is a setting on a channel, not a separate thing to build.

1. Enable inbound email on the channel

1. Open channel settings

   Select the channel in the sidebar and click Settings.

2. Go to Email

   Click Email in the left navigation. The tab splits into Inbound, which controls what becomes a ticket, and Outbound, which controls what Ravenna sends.

3. Turn on inbound email

   Under Inbound, in the Receiving email card, enable Allow inbound emails to be sent to this channel.

4. Copy the channel address

   Ravenna generates a unique address in the form [e-mail]. This is the address you forward to. You are not asking anyone to use it directly.

2. Forward your real inbox to it

Keep [e-mail] as the address people use, and forward it to the Ravenna address.

Forward from Google

Gmail and Google Workspace.

Forward from Microsoft

Outlook and Microsoft 365.

Learn more about configuring forwarding for other providers

3. Understand what happens to an incoming email

When mail arrives at the channel address, Ravenna extracts the sender, subject, and body, checks whether it belongs to an existing ticket thread, and creates a new ticket if it does not. Senders outside your organization become guest users automatically, and CC recipients are added as followers.

The resulting ticket inherits the channel’s configuration, which is the whole point: the same agent, the same forms, the same workflows. You do not build an email pipeline, you attach a doorway to the desk you already have.

Learn more about email-to-ticket conversion

4. Turn on agent auto-respond

An agent will not answer an email ticket unless you tell it to. Enable Auto-respond to email on the agent, and set a response delay if context tends to arrive in follow-up messages. Delays run from immediate to five minutes.

If the agent cannot give a definitive answer, the ticket is tagged ai-unresolved for a human to pick up, which makes a useful view.

Learn more about auto-respond

5. Configure outbound before you go live

Two outbound settings prevent the two classic email failures.

Blocked recipients, to stop reply loops

If another ticketing system or an auto-responder is on the other end, two systems can generate mail at each other indefinitely. Under Outbound > Blocked recipients, add the offending addresses or domains as chips.

Domain entries match subdomains too, so vendor-helpdesk.com also blocks [e-mail]. If every recipient on an email is blocked, Ravenna skips sending it rather than delivering to nobody.

This only affects outbound mail. Blocked users still see updates in Ravenna and Slack, and inbound from those addresses is unaffected.

Mask internal agent emails, on by default

Workspace members are stripped from the To and CC of outbound replies, so your team’s personal addresses do not leak to external recipients.

The requester is always kept, even when they are a workspace member opening their own ticket, and genuinely external participants are always kept.

Leave this on unless you have a specific reason not to.

Learn more about outbound email configuration

6. Decide who is allowed to create tickets

Under Inbound, the Blocked senders and Allow list cards control which addresses can create tickets. Both take addresses or domains as chips, normalized to lowercase.

• If email is only for internal staff who forgot about Slack, restrict it to your own domains.
• If you support contractors, vendors, or customers, leave it open and enable guest users.

Guest users created this way get a Ravenna record, email notifications about their own tickets, and the ability to reply by email. They cannot sign in, use Slack, see other people’s tickets, or read private notes.

Learn more about security and filtering and guest users

7. Test it properly

Send four emails before you announce anything:

• One from an internal address, and confirm the ticket has the right requester
• One from an external address, and confirm a guest user is created
• One reply to an existing ticket, and confirm it threads instead of creating a duplicate
• One with a CC, and confirm the CC becomes a follower

Then reply from Ravenna and check what actually lands in the requester’s inbox, including who appears in the To and CC lines.

Where teams get this wrong

Retiring the old address

Forward it. People have it saved, in documents, and on printed signage.

Forgetting auto-respond

Without it, email tickets sit untouched while Slack tickets get instant AI answers.

No blocked recipients

The first vendor auto-responder loop is memorable.

Not testing the reply path

Threading and recipient masking are exactly the things you want to discover in a test.

Next

SLAs and business hours

Email requesters have no idea you are offline. Set expectations.

Launch the Portal

A better front door for people who keep emailing.