FAQ
Also see Modules FAQ, FreeScout Troubleshooting, Sending Issues and Fetching Issues.
No. There are no any limitations.
No for now. Migration will be possible after FreeScout API will be implemented (#148).
Customers create conversations by sending emails to the mailbox's email address or they can submit tickets from End-User Portal.
Unfortunately not and will not be implemented due to various reasons. Users see all customers in the Search, in To, Cc and Bcc autosuggest dropdowns.
Uncheck "Spread the Word" in "Manage » Settings".
Yes. See End-User Portal Module.
When I assign a task to someone do they get an email notifying them that they have a task assigned to them?
Yes, you need to configure Notifications for the user:
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Make sure that your mailbox is able to send emails in the mailbox's Connection Settings.
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Make sure that users have proper notification settings in their "Profile » Notifications".
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Make sure that background job is working in "System » Status".
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Make sure that emails successfully sent in "Manage » Logs » Outgoing Emails".
See this.
Use Workflows module.
I've fetched emails from my mailbox, but older emails were not fetched. How can I fetch the entire inbox messages?
Go to "Manage » System » Tools" and fetch all undread emails.
If you are running the fetch command from "Manage » System » Tools" your web server won't allow it to run for a long time. Instead use the following console command.
Use Custom Fields module.
Use Workflows module.
Some styles are removed not to break FreeScout layout (see this issue). There is no workaround for this for now. You can view original email like this:
Is it possible to forward customer's email to FreeScout and make it look like it came from this customer?
Support agent just need to add a @fwd text to the very beginning of the email when forwarding it:
FreeScout will grab customer's email from the email body (first email found in the body) and create a conversation on behalf of this customer. This won't happen if the email is forwarded to more than one recipient. No auto-reply is being sent when new conversation is created from forwarded customer's email.
The email should be a proper forwarded email. It should have In-Reply-To header set and have subject starting with "FWD:", "FW:" or "F:".
FreeScout searches for the first email address it can find in the email body to use as a customer email address. If no email address is found FreeScout, creates a conversation as usually using sender (from "From:" header) as a customer. If support agent forwarding an email to FreeScout has an email address mentioned in his/her signature, this email address will be used as a customer email address for the new ticket. See an example marked with red on the image below.
To prevent this behavior the support agent should remove his/her signature from the email when forwarding it (or simply remove his/her email address from the signature in the email body).
Use "New Conversation" button in the message's dropdown menu:
How can I determine what happens after replying, changing conversation status or assigning a conversation?
You can do so in the Send dropdown.
In FreeScout departments are implemented as mailboxes.
https://github.com/freescout-help-desk/freescout/wiki/Backup
When you activate some official module, application domain name is sent to https://freescout.net API to register module license.
The team is international and consist of volunteers. Team members prefer to work anonymously and do not want to be disclosed.
No. But you can find someone here.
See this.
Open a customer profile, add additional email addresses and customers will be merged automatically (only email and conversations will be moved, no customer data is copied/moved).
The original email is being fetched from the mail server. So performance of the "Original Message" window depends only on the speed of your mail server's IMAP.
FreeScout first tries to fetch the email via IMAP and get its body. If IMAP connection fails or original email has been deleted from the mail server it will show truncated message stored in the DB.
Original message also can not be obtained if conversation has been moved to another mailbox.
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Change APP_URL in
/.envfile and clear cache. -
Reactivate modules' licenses on a new domain.
No. It's done by design.
User is allowed to reply to email notifications only from his/her email or Alternate emails (specified in user's profile). In other cases if some mailbox receives a reply to the user notification from some other email you will get the error described above.
You can download APK file using apkcombo tool for example and unzip it. Original source code is not provided.
We are not planning to add more statuses to conversations. Feel free to use Tags or Custom Felds.
No. FreeScout shows number of active conversations only.
Select "Move" in the conversation's actions dropdown and enter those mailbox's email address.
It's by design. The "Move" feature does not trigger notifications when moving conversations manually or via Workflows.
There is no plans to make Contacts or Tags separate for mailboxes. The only solution we can suggestion is to set up separate FreeScout instances.
If you are using a Web Proxy and cannot see Modules, enable access to https://freescout.net on your server. Also you can use APP_PROXY variable in .env file in order to specify your proxy.
Outgoing Emails log is cleaned automatically once a month and keeps logs for the last 6 months.
No. Helpdesk just makes API calls to freescout.net in "Manage » Modules" page.
Admins have access to all mailboxes and receive notifications from all mailboxes. Admins (and other users too) can mute notifications for specific mailboxes this way:
When support agent is replying his/her icon is highlighted with the red border:
See this
See https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/filesystem
See this.
Make sure that it's not connected to the Office Hours module or Noreply Emails module.
It means that the external system sends an auto-reply but does not add a special autoresponder header to the email. One of the following headers must be present for auto-replies:
'x-autoreply' => '',
'x-autorespond' => '',
'auto-submitted' => 'auto-replied',
'precedence' => ['auto_reply', 'bulk', 'junk'],
'x-precedence' => ['auto_reply', 'bulk', 'junk'],
It can be done via Workflows Module.
The Search by default shows also Deleted conversations - this can be adjusted using "State" filter in the Search.
It's a known limitation. See this.
It's by design. Deleted folder becomes visible only after opening Closed folder.
This error may happen for example when your mail server is not available. Check all logs in Manage > Logs.
In such cases the email can be viewed using "Show Original" button. If "Show Original" shows a warning it means you need to find out why FreeScout can't load original email from your mail server - maybe you've deleted the email from your mail server.
Also you can try to enable the alternative reply separation method - set APP_ALTERNATIVE_REPLY_SEPARATION=true parameter in the .env file and clear cache.
It is a known thing. The only solution for now is to use "Show Original" button under message's dropdown menu.
Also feel free to enable the following option in Mailbox settings:
You can do it via GET parameters: /mailbox/1/new-ticket?to=test@example.org&subject=Test
Simply add an email to the customer or change the customer to another one having an email address. After that reply to the phone conversation and it will be automatically converted into standard email conversation.
Use CRM Module.
You can use Workflows Module to set up all kinds of SLA rules.
It's by design (see #1504).
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Standard cron does not allow to run commands more often than every minute.
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If you will connect by IMAP too often your mail server may start blocking FreeScout connections via IMAP.
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Laravel commands system is designed to be executed every minute. Running it more often may have unpredictable results.
When delete an email address is deleted from a customer, a new client appears with this email address.
When deleting an email from some customer if there is a conversation with 'customer_email` field equal to the deleted email address, new customer with this email address will be created.
See this.
Underscores are added for security reasons. For example if a PDF file contains JavaScript then its extension will be changed to .pdf_.
You can do so via APP_CUSTOMER_PHOTO_SIZE variable in .env file (don't forget to clear cache after setting it).
You can do so via APP_USER_PHOTO_SIZE variable in .env file (don't forget to clear cache after setting it).
Keep in mind that each user has Timezone settings in their profile - it has precedence over global Timezone setting.
How can support team know that there are problems with sending emails and emails are not being sent?
- In FreeScout admin is responsible for monitoring email sending issues. Admin should enable Logs Monitoring in "Manage » Settings » Alerts" to be notified by email on Send Errors.
- If some message has not been sent after 1 hour of trying the corresponding message will be shown to support agent in the conversation:
- If there are any problems with background mail queue processing the following alert will be shown in the mailbox to all support agents:
FreeScout is trying to resend emails for a week re-trying every hour. You can manage sending queue in "Manage » System » Background Jobs" (search for "SendReplyToCustomer" jobs).
Go to "Manage » Settings"
If you want to support the project simply star this repo or see other options here. We don't need donations.
Just remove the password from mailbox "Fetching Emails" settings.
See this
Set APP_USE_MAIL_DATE_ON_FETCHING=true parameter in the .env file and clear cache. After that import your old emails, remove this parameter from the .env file and clear cache again. Use this parameter ONLY TO FETCH OLD EMAILS, do not keep it ON all the time as it may cause problems with new incoming emails dates - see this issue.
FreeScout currently uses two libraries:
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Webklex/laravel-imap(uses native PHPimapextension) -
Webklex/php-imap(implements IMAP protocol on its own)
Webklex/php-imap is used in two cases: if your mailbox uses modern Microsoft OAuth IMAP authentication or if you manually set APP_NEW_FETCHING_LIBRARY=true parameter in .env file. In all other cases Webklex/laravel-imap is used. In the future when Webklex/php-imap will be mature enough FreeScout will switch to it completely.
If when checking new updates you are receiving GET https://api.github.com/repos/freescout-help-desk/freescout/tags resulted in a 403 rate limit exceeded error: if you are using a shared hosting the only solution in this case is to move to a dedicated IP as apparently someone else on this IP is making requests to https://api.github.com.
I'm receiving "...sameorigin..." error in the browser when embedding FreeScout via iframe on another website
By default FreeScout sets X-Frame-Options header to SAMEORIGIN. In order to allow embedding your FreeScout via iframe set APP_X_FRAME_OPTIONS=false in .env file and clear cache.
See this instruction.
You need to move all the files (along with modules) and the database. After transfer make sure to update .env file with the new info and clear cache. If FreeScout's domain has changed move modules licenses to the new domain.
See Troubleshooting.
It means your server is not powerful enough to delete records from your DB, so possible solution is to upgrade your DB server. See this issue.
If you are using AWS, see the solution here
DKIM is configured on your SMTP mail server (see this).
Make sure that your FreeScout is available from the Internet and not protected using Basic HTTP Authentication. Otherwise use Embed Images Module.
If you are using NGINX Proxy Manager or any other proxy, disable all kinds of Assets Cache (like in this issue).
No as FreeScout does not allow to execute those files.
It means you have a lot of conversations and your server is not powerful enough to search through them:
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Try to upgrade your server CPU.
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If still no luck - use https://freescout.net/module/faster-search/
See this.
It means your support agents are trying to reply to the email notification from some random email. They should reply from the email address they have in your FreeScout or you should add extra emails to user's "Alternate Emails" on user's profile page.
As number of conversations in my FreeScout grew to few hundred thousands how can I increase FreeScout performance?
This this discussion.
See this.
We've created FreeScout back in 2018 for our own usage and generously shared it with the world using Freemium model (which means free core and non-free extensions). That time there were no modules, just free bare core application. This was already enough for us and many others to switch from Zendesk / Help Scout and provide professional customer support without having to pay any monthly fee to anyone. Then over the years we've developed many awesome extensions...