Contact form senders

In short: A contact form on your website sends emails from a single technical address, for example contact@yourwebshop.com, while the customer’s real address is in the text of the message. By setting up that technical address as a contact form sender, aishaa extracts the customer’s email address and name from the message body. The ticket is then in the customer’s name and your reply goes to the customer, not to the form.

Where to find this

Go to Organisation > Channels > Contact form senders. The page is called Contact form senders and has the explanation: Configure trusted technical senders whose structured email body contains the real customer email address.

Who: from the Organisation admin role. The setting applies per organisation.

The Contact form senders page under Organisation > Channels > Contact form senders, with the list of technical senders, the Parsing column and the Test, Edit and Delete buttons.

What you see in the list

Use the search field Search by email or description to filter the list. Use New sender to add a sender, and Refresh to reload the list. As long as the list is empty, it says No contact form senders have been configured yet.

Adding a contact form sender

1. Click New sender. The Add contact form sender dialog opens with the explanation: Configure a trusted sender for contact form emails. When an email is received from this address, aishaa can extract the real customer email address from the message body.
2. Fill in Contact form sender email (required). This is the technical address that sends the form emails, for example contact@example.com. Without this address you see Contact form sender email is required.
3. Optionally fill in a Description, so your team recognises the source.
4. Leave the Custom field names block empty if your form uses the usual field names (see below).
5. Click Save. You see Contact form sender added.

The Add contact form sender dialog with the email address of the technical sender, the description, the Custom field names block and the expandable Advanced regex override block.

Default recognition

aishaa automatically searches the text of the form email for common field names such as Email, Naam and Name, and reads the value that follows. If your form uses labels like these, you do not need to set anything else. The list then shows Default under Parsing.

Custom field names

If your form uses other labels (for example “Your email address” or “First name”), enter them under:

The explanation in the dialog: aishaa automatically looks for common field names such as Email, E-mail, Naam and Name. Only add custom labels if your contact form uses different field names. The list then shows Custom labels under Parsing.

Advanced regex override

Only if field names are not enough, you can enter a regular expression in the Advanced regex override block:

Use template fills in a default template as a starting point (Default email regex template and Default name regex template). The dialog warns: Only use regex when field names are not enough. Incorrect regex settings can prevent sender detection from working. The list then shows Regex under Parsing.

Testing a sender

1. In the list, click Test (the flask icon) next to the sender. The Test contact form sender dialog opens.
2. In Contact form text body, paste the text of a real form email (required; otherwise you see Contact form text body is required.).
3. Click Test.

With Parsing succeeded. you see a table of what aishaa found: Technical sender, Reply-to email (the customer address found), Display name (or Not found) and Enabled (Yes or No). With Parsing failed. you see the Reason. Then adjust the field labels or use a regex, and test again. If the expected customer address still does not come out, contact the aishaa team via the aishaa support chat in aishaa (menu Chat, conversation aishaa support) or via support@aishaa.nl, and include an example of the contact form email.

The Test contact form sender dialog with pasted form text and the result Parsing succeeded, showing the Technical sender, Reply-to email and Display name that were found.

What happens when a form email arrives

• When an email arrives from an enabled contact form sender, aishaa reads the customer address and customer name from the message body. The ticket is put in that customer’s name, the customer appears as a contact and your reply goes to the address that was found.
• A message that a workflow sends to the customer, such as an acknowledgement of receipt, also goes to the customer address that was found, not to the technical address of the form. See Automatic reply and acknowledgement of receipt.
• The customer card on the ticket shows an @ icon. Hover over it for This ticket came in through a contact form., with below it where the message came in and the technical sender.
• If aishaa does not find a usable address, the message stays in the name of the technical sender address. This also happens if the address found is invalid, if it is an address of your own organisation, or if it is the same as the technical sender address itself.
• If the Enabled switch is off, aishaa treats the emails from that address as ordinary emails from the technical address. When you flip the switch you see Contact form sender enabled. or Contact form sender disabled.

Good to know

• Set up the contact form senders that belong to each organisation within that organisation. If your website uses a different technical address for each brand, add the correct address in each organisation.
• Do not put the technical address in an incoming email rule with Block; the form emails will then stop arriving altogether.
• If a colleague forwards a customer email to aishaa by hand, aishaa recognises the original sender without you setting up a contact form sender. See Your aishaa Mail address and forwarding.
• Test again with a recent form email after every change to your website or form plugin. If the field labels change, recognition can stop without you noticing: the tickets then arrive in the name of the technical address again.
• To edit or delete, use Edit (dialog Edit contact form sender) and Delete. After deleting you see Contact form sender deleted.

Related

• Email setup: the options at a glance
• How aishaa links emails to the right conversation
• Automatic reply and acknowledgement of receipt
• The customer profile