Send email to add/update a record in Knack

I am using Knack to create my own helpdesk ticketing system. So far it’s going great.
What I need is a way for users to send emails to helpdesk@domain.com and have it create a record in Knack.
Also if the user replies to an email that was sent from Knack it needs to update the record.

It doesn’t seem that Knack can do this natively but I have seen several references to accomplishing this through Zapier. I’ve never used Zapier, has anyone done this and have any tips to get started?

Creating a record when sending an email can be achieved with Zapier or (my preference) Integromat. The scenario would run when the form that sends the email is submitted. The scenario would need to either be connected to a GSuite or Outlook account to send the email as it would be outside of Knack so needs a mail client to send as part of the scenario.
Creating a new record in Knack would be a simple step in the scenario.

Replying is a bigger issue as there is no link between the users email address and Knack.

hey, i use parseur with zapier, but integromat would do the same. I set up a mail forwarder in Gmail to send the email from an address to the reciever at parsuer. It strips the data and then with Zapier/integromat sends the data to Knack, this was the best and most reliable solution https://parseur.com/

Hi Joshua

Firstly, I would agree with Carl about the use of Integromat over Zapier every time - unless there is an app to which Zapier have a connection but Integromat don’t. In terms of mail parsing (i.e. reading structured data out of the email itself) Zapier has more options but Integromat has a couple in Beta which can be used.

It does depend on what you need to do with the emails though - if you simply want to attach them to a record or update the record to say that you have had a response then it is fairly simple to implement:

  1. In the email you send, include a unique id (based on an Auto Increment field) in the subject line from the record that is ‘sending’ the email. It would help if this value were always the same length and was at the end of the subject line
  2. Have Integromat (or Zapier) monitor the mailbox replies are sent to for new messages.
  3. If your unique value were, say 10 characters long use a Knack Search for Records Module to look for the sending record with this:

You can then add another Module to the Scenario which performs whatever update you need (for example adding the email text into a text field).

I hope this helps!

Julian

Hi cheers for that. Sometimes its so confusing for a non coder to make all the links work! :grinning:

Yes have setup Integromat, made it work then broke it, I found that I could not have a nicely formatted outbound email have looked at sending the group mail via Keap. Found that Keap/infusionsoft had a problem with creating a group tag so now going to try Send Grid.

I have set up a Plus plan on Knack, created CNAME records for the domain verification to make email sending better. Now if I verify my domain with Send Grid by adding additional CNAME records will cause another conflict?

Anyway I will let you all know if it all works later today