Also see Modules FAQ, FreeScout Troubleshooting, Sending Issues and Fetching Issues.

Are there any limitations on the number of agents or tickets?

No. There are no any limitations.

Is there any migration tool which can be used to migrate to FreeScout from another help desk?

No for now. Migration will be possible after FreeScout API will be implemented (#148).

How do customers create their own conversations?

Customers create conversations by sending emails to the mailbox’s email address or they can submit tickets from End-User Portal.

Is it possible to have separate contacts/customers per mailbox?

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.

How to remove branding from emails to customers

Uncheck „Spread the Word“ in „Manage » Settings“.

Is there any way to put on my website a contact form submitting tickets to the FreeScout?

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:

Users do not receive notification emails.

1. Make sure that your mailbox is able to send emails in the mailbox’s Connection Settings.
2. Make sure that users have proper notification settings in their „Profile » Notifications“.
3. Make sure that background job is working in „System » Status“.
4. Make sure that emails successfully sent in „Manage » Logs » Outgoing Emails“.

FreeScout sends multiple duplicate emails to customers

See this.

Is it possible to configure SLA rules?

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.

I’m trying to fetch large amount of email but getting 504 Gateway Time-out

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.

Is it possible to set priorities for tickets?

Use Custom Fields module.

How to send an email to a customer on closing a support ticket?

Use Workflows module.

When viewing a ticket in FreeScout, the original formatting and styles are removed

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.

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).

Is it possible to create a conversation on behalf of a customer in FreeScout?

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.

How can I create departments in FreeScout?

In FreeScout departments are implemented as mailboxes.

How to backup and restore the FreeScout?

https://github.com/freescout-helpdesk/freescout/wiki/Backup

Does FreeScout make any external or third party API calls?

When you activate some official module, application domain name is sent to https://freescout.net API to register module license.

Where can we see FreeScout’s roadmap?

• Todo-list
• Wish-list

Who is behind the project? Is there a list of developers working on the FreeScout?

The team is international and consist of volunteers. Team members prefer to work anonymously and do not want to be disclosed.

Do you have developers for custom development, managing and helping out?

No. But you can find someone here.

Why FreeScout is still using Laravel 5?

See this.

How can I merge customers?

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).

Show Original window is too slow

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.

Why does Show Original window shows truncated message without previous history?

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.

The message may not be found via IMAP if you delete emails from the mail server or if you remove some IMAP folder from mailbox’s „Fetching Emails“ settings.

How can I change FreeScout domain?

1. Change APP_URL in /.env file and clear cache.
2. Reactivate modules‘ licenses on a new domain.

Is email deleted from my mail server when I delete in FreeScout?

No. It’s done by design.

Why am I receiving „Unable to process your update“ email?

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.

Do you provide source code of mobile apps?

You can download APK file using apkcombo tool for example and unzip it. Original source code is not provided.

I want to have an extra status for conversations – Resolved

We are not planning to add more statuses to conversations. Feel free to use Tags or Custom Felds.

Is it possible to show numbers of messages in folders?

No. FreeScout shows number of active conversations only.

How can I move a conversation to some mailbox to which I don’t have access?

Select „Move“ in the conversation’s actions dropdown and enter those mailbox’s email address.

I want to have separate Contacts and Tags for each mailbox

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.

Modules cannot be loaded via Proxy

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.

How to clear the Outgoing Emails logs?

Outgoing Emails log is cleaned automatically once a month and keeps logs for the last 6 months.

Does freescout.net collect any statistics after FreeScout is installed locally?

No. Helpdesk just makes API calls to freescout.net in „Manage » Modules“ page.

Admins get notifications for all mailboxes. What to do?

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:

How does the collision detection work?

When support agent is replying his/her icon is highlighted with the red border:

How can I restrict some user to see only tickets assigned to him/her?

See this

How can attachments be stored in Amazon AWS S3?

See https://laravel.com/docs/5.5/filesystem

FreeScout attachments are available via direct link

See this.

Auto replies are not being sent

Make sure that it’s not connected to the Office Hours module or Noreply Emails module.

Endless tickets due to Auto-Reply

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'],

How to disable auto replies for some senders?

It can be done via Workflows Module.

The Search shows more conversations than I see in the mailbox

The Search by default shows also Deleted conversations – this can be adjusted using „State“ filter in the Search.

Can’t add to CC extra mailbox when replying to an email notification.

It’s a known limitation. See this.

Trash folder is not visible.

It’s by design. Deleted folder becomes visible only after opening Closed folder.

App\Jobs\TriggerAction has been attempted too many times or run too long

This error may happen for example when your mail server is not available. Check all logs in Manage > Logs.

Some emails are empty in FreeScout

In such cases the email can be viewed using „Show Original“ button.

When a customer replies within the cited text FreeScout does not show it.

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:

How can I prefill To and Subject fields when creating a conversation?

You can do it via GET parameters: /mailbox/1/new-ticket?to=test@example.org&subject=Test

How to convert phone conversation into email conversation?

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.

How can I show customer fields like Company or Country in conversation list?

Use CRM Module.

Is there such thing as SLA in FreeScout?

You can use Workflows Module to set up all kinds of SLA rules.

When CCed customer replies, conversation’s customer changes to this customer.

It’s by design (see #1504).

Is it possible to fetch emails more often than every minute?

1. Standard cron does not allow to run commands more often than every minute.
2. If you will connect by IMAP too often your mail server may start blocking FreeScout connections via IMAP.
3. 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.

How to configure filesystem with Digital Ocean spaces or S3?

See this.

Why do some attachments get underscores added to file extensions?

Underscores are added for security reasons. For example if a PDF file contains JavaScript then its extension will be changed to .pdf_.

How can I make customer photo size larger than 64px?

You can do so via APP_CUSTOMER_PHOTO_SIZE variable in .env file (don’t forget to clear cache after setting it).

How can I make user photo size larger than 50px?

You can do so via APP_USER_PHOTO_SIZE variable in .env file (don’t forget to clear cache after setting it).

Timezone setting does not work

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?

1. 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.

2. If some message has not been sent after 1 hour of trying the corresponding message will be shown to support agent in the conversation:

3. 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).

How to start ticket number from a higher value?

Go to „Manage » Settings“

How can I support this project?

If you want to support the project simply star this repo or see other options here. We don’t need donations.

How to stop or pause email fetching for a mailbox?

Just remove the password from mailbox „Fetching Emails“ settings.

How can I let a customer reply to a ticket by mentioning its number in the email Subject?

See this

How can we import old emails from mail server and keep their original dates?

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.

What libraries does FreeScout use to connect via IMAP?

FreeScout currently uses two libraries:

• Webklex/laravel-imap (uses native PHP imap extension)
• 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 and drop PHP 7.x support.

GitHub API error: 403 rate limit exceeded

If when checking new updates you are receiving GET https://api.github.com/repos/freescout-helpdesk/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.

Why FreeScout is called free helpdesk when there are non-free modules?

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…