Scenario: you have a Zendesk helpdesk and use Google Apps. You want to use your Google Apps domain for your Zendesk reply-to email address (e.g. support@mydomain.com) instead of the default support@mydomain.zendesk.com. This should be straight-forward to setup, but Google Apps has a couple of ways to achieve this. The most obvious way (for me) didn't work as expected, so below is how I got emails flowing to everywhere they should. I've also described what I did first so you can have the full picture.

What Didn't Work: The most obvious method of getting support@mydomain.com working was using an email alias (a "Nickname" in Google Apps), and forwarding mail sent to the alias address to Zendesk. Simple, and I know it works for - as an example - Microsoft Exchange accounts. The steps involved are:

• In your domain admin panel, add the nickname to the user account you want to forward on the mail.
• In the users GMail settings, add your default Zendesk email as a new forwarding address. Google will send a verification email to this address, which Zendesk will try to process.
• Login to Zendesk. You will most likely find your verification email under Views > Suspended Tickets. Open up the ticket and copy the verification code.
• Back in GMail, enter the verification code to complete adding the address. Do not turn on forwarding or all the users email will go to Zendesk.
• Instead, create a new ticket with the settings to(support@mydomain.com), skip inbox, forward to support@mydomain.zendesk.com.

With all that setup I found I was able to receive Zendesk emails OK (new tickets and updates) but was unable to send updates. The email would show as sent but never seemed to reach Zendesk. This might have been because the nickname was added to the email account used as my agent account, but I don't have any extra Google Apps user accounts to test this theory.

What Did Work: After pulling my hair out a little trying to figure out what was going on I went back to the drawing board. The answer turned out to be a feature I'd never looked at in Google Apps: Groups. Google Apps Groups seem to be more like Exchange distribution lists rather than the other Google Groups. The steps needed are:

• In your domain admin panel, remove the nickname for your support email if you previously set it up as I described above.
• Go to Groups and add new group.
• Give your group a name, and set the group email to support@mydomain.com. Do not tick the box to add your domain users to the group. Click the button to Create Group.
• In the Add New Members box, add support@mydomain.zendesk.com as the only member.
• Under roles and permissions, tick the box to allow all internet users to post to the group. You need this or your customers will get a bounce-back as they are not part of the group. Time will tell if this leads to spam getting to my Zendesk. If it does I'll maybe have to re-look at this.
• Save Changes, and you are done.

That should be all you need to do. Once I had set this up I was able to fully receive Zendesk emails OK and - crucially - send updates to tickets.