• Service Desk glossary
• Improve your project’s security
• Customize emails sent to external participants
  • Thank you email
  • New participant email
  • New note email
  • Instance-wide email header, footer, and additional text
• Use a custom template for Service Desk tickets
• Support Bot user
  • Change the Support Bot’s display name
• Default ticket visibility
• Reopen issues when an external participant comments
• Custom email address
  • Prerequisites
  • Configure a custom email address
    • Verification
    • Troubleshooting your configuration
      • Invalid credentials
      • Incorrect forwarding target
  • Enable or disable the custom email address
  • Change or remove custom email configuration
  • Custom email reply address
  • Use Google Workspace with your own domain
    • Configure a Google Workspace account
    • Configure email forwarding
    • Configure custom email address
  • Known issues
• Use an additional Service Desk alias email
  • Configure Service Desk alias email
    • Use encrypted credentials
    • Microsoft Graph
  • Configure a suffix for Service Desk alias email
• Configure email ingestion in multi-node environments
  • Helm chart (Kubernetes)
  • Linux package (Omnibus)
    • Set up all nodes
    • Set up a single email ingestion node

Configure Service Desk

By default, Service Desk is active in new projects. If it’s not active, you can do it in the project’s settings.

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the project.
• On GitLab self-managed, you must set up incoming email for the GitLab instance. You should use email sub-addressing, but you can also use catch-all mailboxes. To do this, you must have administrator access.
• You must have enabled issue tracker for the project.

To enable Service Desk in your project:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Service Desk.
4. Turn on the Activate Service Desk toggle.
5. Optional. Complete the fields.
   • Add a suffix to your Service Desk email address.
   • If the list below Template to append to all Service Desk issues is empty, create a description template in your repository.
6. Select Save changes.

Service Desk is now enabled for this project. If anyone sends an email to the address available below Email address to use for Service Desk, GitLab creates a confidential issue with the email’s content.

Service Desk glossary

This glossary provides definitions for terms related to Service Desk.

Improve your project’s security

To improve your Service Desk project’s security, you should:

• Put the Service Desk email address behind an alias on your email system so you can change it later.
• Enable Akismet on your GitLab instance to add spam checking to this service. Unblocked email spam can result in many spam issues being created.

Customize emails sent to external participants

An email is sent to external participants when:

• A requester submits a new ticket by emailing Service Desk.
• An external participant is added to a Service Desk ticket.
• A new public comment is added on a Service Desk ticket.
  • Editing a comment does not trigger a new email to be sent.

You can customize the body of these email messages with Service Desk email templates. The templates can include GitLab Flavored Markdown and some HTML tags. For example, you can format the emails to include a header and footer in accordance with your organization’s brand guidelines. You can also include the following placeholders to display dynamic content specific to the Service Desk ticket or your GitLab instance.

Thank you email

When a requester submits an issue through Service Desk, GitLab sends a thank you email. Without additional configuration, GitLab sends the default thank you email.

To create a custom thank you email template:

1. In the .gitlab/service_desk_templates/ directory of your repository, create a file named thank_you.md.
2. Populate the Markdown file with text, GitLab Flavored Markdown, some selected HTML tags, and placeholders to customize the reply to Service Desk requesters.

New participant email

When an external participant is added to the ticket, GitLab sends a new participant email to let them know they are part of the conversation. Without additional configuration, GitLab sends the default new participant email.

To create a custom new participant email template:

1. In the .gitlab/service_desk_templates/ directory of your repository, create a file named new_participant.md.
2. Populate the Markdown file with text, GitLab Flavored Markdown, some selected HTML tags, and placeholders to customize the reply to Service Desk requesters.

New note email

When a Service Desk ticket has a new public comment, GitLab sends a new note email. Without additional configuration, GitLab sends the content of the comment.

To keep your emails on brand, you can create a custom new note email template. To do so:

1. In the .gitlab/service_desk_templates/ directory in your repository, create a file named new_note.md.
2. Populate the Markdown file with text, GitLab Flavored Markdown, some selected HTML tags, and placeholders to customize the new note email. Be sure to include the %{NOTE_TEXT} in the template to make sure the email recipient can read the contents of the comment.

Instance-wide email header, footer, and additional text

Instance administrators can add a header, footer or additional text to the GitLab instance and apply them to all emails sent from GitLab. If you’re using a custom thank_you.md, new_participant or new_note.md, to include this content, add %{SYSTEM_HEADER}, %{SYSTEM_FOOTER}, or %{ADDITIONAL_TEXT} to your templates.

For more information, see System header and footer messages and custom additional text.

Use a custom template for Service Desk tickets

You can select one description template per project to be appended to every new Service Desk ticket’s description.

You can set description templates at various levels:

• The entire instance.
• A specific group or subgroup.
• A specific project.

The templates are inherited. For example, in a project, you can also access templates set for the instance, or the project’s parent groups.

Prerequisites:

• You must have created a description template.

To use a custom description template with Service Desk:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Service Desk.
4. From the dropdown list Template to append to all Service Desk issues, search or select your template.

Support Bot user

Behind the scenes, Service Desk works by the special Support Bot user creating issues. This user isn’t a billable user, so it does not count toward the license limit count.

In GitLab 16.0 and earlier, comments generated from Service Desk emails show GitLab Support Bot as the author. In GitLab 16.1 and later, these comments show the email of the user who sent the email. This feature only applies to comments made in GitLab 16.1 and later.

Change the Support Bot’s display name

You can change the display name of the Support Bot user. Emails sent from Service Desk have this name in the From header. The default display name is GitLab Support Bot.

To edit the custom email display name:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Service Desk.
4. Below Email display name, enter a new name.
5. Select Save changes.

Default ticket visibility

New tickets are confidential by default, so only project members with at least the Reporter role can view them.

In private and internal projects, you can configure GitLab so that new tickets are not confidential by default, and any project member can view them.

In public projects, this setting is not available because new tickets are always confidential by default.

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the project.

To disable this setting:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Service Desk.
4. Clear the New tickets are confidential by default checkbox.
5. Select Save changes.

Reopen issues when an external participant comments

You can configure GitLab to reopen closed issues when an external participant adds a new comment on an issue by email. This also adds an internal comment that mentions the assignees of the issue and creates to-do items for them.

For a walkthrough, see a short showcase video.

Prerequisites:

• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the project.

To enable this setting:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Service Desk.
4. Select the Reopen issues on a new note from an external participant checkbox.
5. Select Save changes.

Custom email address

Configure a custom email address to show as the sender of your support communication. Maintain brand identity and instill confidence among support requesters with a domain they recognize.

For an overview, see a short showcase video.

This feature is in beta. A beta feature is not production-ready, but is unlikely to change drastically before it’s released. We encourage users to try beta features and provide feedback in the feedback issue.

Prerequisites

You can use one custom email address for Service Desk per project and it must be unique across the instance.

The custom email address you want to use must meet all of the following requirements:

• You can set up email forwarding.
• Forwarded emails preserve the original From header.

• Your service provider must support sub-addressing. An email address consists of a local part (everything before @) and a domain part.

  With email sub-addressing you can create unique variations of an email address by adding a + symbol followed by any text to the local part. Given the email address support@example.com, check whether sub-addressing is supported by sending an email to support+1@example.com. This email should appear in your mailbox.

• You have SMTP credentials (ideally, you should use an app password). The username and password are stored in the database using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with a 256-bit key.
• The SMTP host must be resolvable from the network of your GitLab instance (on GitLab self-managed) or the public internet (on GitLab SaaS).
• You must have at least the Maintainer role for the project.
• Service Desk must be configured for the project.

Configure a custom email address

Configure and verify a custom email address when you want to send Service Desk emails using your own email address.

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Service Desk and find the Configure a custom email address section.
4. Note the presented Service Desk address of this project, and with your email provider (for example, Gmail), set up email forwarding from the custom email address to the Service Desk address.
5. Back in GitLab, complete the fields.
6. Select Save & test connection.

The configuration has been saved and the verification of the custom email address is triggered.

Verification

1. After completing the configuration, all project owners and the administrator that saved the custom email configuration receive a notification email.
2. A verification email is sent using the provided SMTP credentials to the custom email address (with a sub-addressing part). The email contains a verification token. When email forwarding is set up correctly and all prerequisites are met, the email is forwarded to your Service Desk address and ingested by GitLab. GitLab checks the following conditions:
   1. GitLab can send an email using the SMTP credentials.
   2. Sub-addressing is supported (with the +verify sub-addressing part).
   3. From header is preserved after forwarding.
   4. Verification token is correct.
   5. Email is received in 30 minutes.

Typically the process takes only a few minutes.

To cancel verification at any time or if it fails, select Reset custom email. The settings page updates accordingly and reflects the current state of the verification. The SMTP credentials are deleted and you can start the configuration again.

On failure and success all project owners and the user who triggered the verification process receive a notification email with the verification result. If the verification failed, the email also contains details of the reason.

If the verification was successful, the custom email address is ready to be used. You can now enable sending Service Desk emails with the custom email address.

Troubleshooting your configuration

When configuring a custom email you might encounter the following issues.

Invalid credentials

You might get an error that states that invalid credentials were used.

This occurs when the SMTP server returns that the authentication wasn’t successful.

To troubleshoot this:

1. Check your SMTP credentials, especially the username and password.
2. Sometimes GitLab cannot automatically select an authentication method that the SMTP server supports. Either:
   • Try the available authentication methods (Plain, Login and CRAM-MD5).

   • Check which authentication methods your SMTP server supports, using the swaks command line tool:

     1. Run the following command with your credentials and look for a line that starts with 250-AUTH:

        swaks --to user@example.com \
              --from support@example.com \
              --auth-user support@example.com \
              --server smtp@example.com:587 \
              -tls-optional \
              --auth-password your-app-password
        

     2. Select one of the supported authentication methods in the custom email setup form.

Incorrect forwarding target

You might get an error that states that an incorrect forwarding target was used.

This occurs when the verification email was forwarded to a different email address than the project-specific Service Desk address that’s displayed in the custom email configuration form.

You must use the Service Desk address generated from incoming_email. Forwarding to the additional Service Desk alias address generated from service_desk_email is not supported because it doesn’t support all reply by email functionalities.

To troubleshoot this:

1. Find the correct email address to forward emails to. Either:
   • Note the address from the verification result email that all project owners and the user that triggered the verification process receive.
   • Copy the address from the Service Desk email address to forward emails to input in the custom email setup form.
2. Forward all emails to the custom email address to the correct target email address.

Enable or disable the custom email address

After the custom email address has been verified, administrators can enable or disable sending Service Desk emails with the custom email address.

To enable the custom email address:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Service Desk.
4. Turn on the Enable custom email toggle. Service Desk emails to external participants are sent using the SMTP credentials.

To disable the custom email address:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Service Desk.

4. Turn off the Enable custom email toggle. Because you set up email forwarding, emails to your custom email address continue to be processed and appear as Service Desk Tickets in your project.

   Service Desk emails to external participants are now sent using the GitLab instance’s default outgoing email configuration.

Change or remove custom email configuration

To change the custom email configuration you must reset and remove it and configure custom email again.

To reset the configuration at any step in the process, select Reset custom email. The credentials are then removed from the database.

Custom email reply address

External participants can reply by email to Service Desk tickets. GitLab uses an email reply address with a 32-character reply key that corresponds to the ticket. When a custom email is configured, GitLab generates the reply address from that email.

Use Google Workspace with your own domain

Set up a custom email address for Service Desk when using Google Workspace with your own domain.

Prerequisites:

• You already have a Google Workspace account.
• You can create new accounts for your tenant.

To configure a custom Service Desk email address with Google Workspace:

1. Configure a Google Workspace account.
2. Configure email forwarding.
3. Configure custom email address.

Configure a Google Workspace account

First, you must create and configure a Google Workspace account.

In Google Workspace:

1. Create a new account for the custom email address you’d like to use (for example, support@example.com).
2. Sign in to that account and activate two-factor authentication.
3. Create an app password that you can use as your SMTP password. Store it in a secure place and remove spaces between the characters.

Next, you must configure email forwarding.

Configure email forwarding

The following steps require moving between GitLab and Google Workspace.

In GitLab:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General
3. Expand Service Desk.
4. Note the email address below Service Desk email address to forward emails to.

In Google Workspace:

1. Sign in to the custom email account and open the Forwarding and POP/IMAP settings page.
2. Select Add a forwarding address.
3. Enter the Service Desk address from the custom email form.
4. Select Next.
5. Confirm your input and select Proceed. Google sends an email to the Service Desk address and requires a confirmation code.

In GitLab:

1. Go to Issues of the project and wait for a new issue to be created from the confirmation email from Google.
2. Open the issue and note the confirmation code.
3. (Optional) Delete the issue.

In Google Workspace:

1. Enter the confirmation code and select Verify.
2. Select Forward a copy of incoming mail to and make sure the Service Desk address is selected from the dropdown list.
3. At the bottom of the page, select Save Changes.

Next, configure a custom email address to use with Service Desk.

Configure custom email address

In GitLab:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General
3. Expand Service Desk and find the custom email settings.
4. Complete the fields:
   • Custom email address: Your custom email address.
   • SMTP host: smtp.gmail.com.
   • SMTP port: 587.
   • SMTP username: Prefilled with the custom email address.
   • SMTP password: The app password you previously created for the custom email account.
   • SMTP authentication method: Let GitLab select a server-supported method (recommended)
5. Select Save and test connection
6. After the verification process you should be able to enable the custom email address.

Known issues

• Some service providers don’t allow SMTP connections any more. Often you can enable them on a per user basis and create an app password.
• Microsoft Exchange doesn’t preserve the From header, so you cannot use a custom email from the same tenant. As a workaround:
  • On GitLab SaaS, use a transport rule to forward emails from the custom email address to the Service Desk email from GitLab SaaS. Forwarding to an email address outside the current tenant preserves the original From header.
  • On GitLab self-managed, use a subdomain or a different domain from another service provider for the custom email address or the GitLab instance incoming_email or service_desk_email.

Use an additional Service Desk alias email

You can use an additional alias email address for Service Desk for an instance.

To do this, you must configure a service_desk_email in the instance configuration. You can also configure a custom suffix that replaces the default -issue- portion on the sub-addressing part.

Configure Service Desk alias email

Service Desk uses the incoming email configuration by default. However, to have a separate email address for Service Desk, configure service_desk_email with a custom suffix in project settings.

Prerequisites:

• The address must include the +%{key} placeholder in the user portion of the address, before the @. The placeholder is used to identify the project where the issue should be created.
• The service_desk_email and incoming_email configurations must always use separate mailboxes to make sure Service Desk emails are processed correctly.

To configure a custom mailbox for Service Desk with IMAP, add the following snippets to your configuration file in full:

gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_enabled'] = true
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_address'] = "project_contact+%{key}@gmail.com"
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_email'] = "project_contact@gmail.com"
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_password'] = "[REDACTED]"
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_mailbox_name'] = "inbox"
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_idle_timeout'] = 60
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_log_file'] = "/var/log/gitlab/mailroom/mail_room_json.log"
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_host'] = "imap.gmail.com"
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_port'] = 993
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_ssl'] = true
gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_start_tls'] = false

service_desk_email:
  enabled: true
  address: "project_contact+%{key}@example.com"
  user: "project_contact@example.com"
  password: "[REDACTED]"
  host: "imap.gmail.com"
  delivery_method: webhook
  secret_file: .gitlab-mailroom-secret
  port: 993
  ssl: true
  start_tls: false
  log_path: "log/mailroom.log"
  mailbox: "inbox"
  idle_timeout: 60
  expunge_deleted: true

The configuration options are the same as for configuring incoming email.

Use encrypted credentials

Instead of having the Service Desk email credentials stored in plaintext in the configuration files, you can optionally use an encrypted file for the incoming email credentials.

Prerequisites:

• To use encrypted credentials, you must first enable the encrypted configuration.

The supported configuration items for the encrypted file are:

• user
• password

Microsoft Graph

service_desk_email can be configured to read Microsoft Exchange Online mailboxes with the Microsoft Graph API instead of IMAP. Set up an OAuth 2.0 application for Microsoft Graph the same way as for incoming email.

  gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_enabled'] = true
  gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_address'] = "project_contact+%{key}@example.onmicrosoft.com"
  gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_email'] = "project_contact@example.onmicrosoft.com"
  gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_mailbox_name'] = "inbox"
  gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_log_file'] = "/var/log/gitlab/mailroom/mail_room_json.log"
  gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_inbox_method'] = 'microsoft_graph'
  gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_inbox_options'] = {
    'tenant_id': '<YOUR-TENANT-ID>',
    'client_id': '<YOUR-CLIENT-ID>',
    'client_secret': '<YOUR-CLIENT-SECRET>',
    'poll_interval': 60  # Optional
  }

  gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_inbox_options'] = {
    'azure_ad_endpoint': 'https://login.microsoftonline.us',
    'graph_endpoint': 'https://graph.microsoft.us',
    'tenant_id': '<YOUR-TENANT-ID>',
    'client_id': '<YOUR-CLIENT-ID>',
    'client_secret': '<YOUR-CLIENT-SECRET>',
    'poll_interval': 60  # Optional
  }

     service_desk_email:
       enabled: true
       address: "project_contact+%{key}@example.onmicrosoft.com"
       user: "project_contact@example.onmicrosoft.com"
       mailbox: "inbox"
       delivery_method: webhook
       log_path: "log/mailroom.log"
       secret_file: .gitlab-mailroom-secret
       inbox_method: "microsoft_graph"
       inbox_options:
         azure_ad_endpoint: "https://login.microsoftonline.us"
         graph_endpoint: "https://graph.microsoft.us"
         tenant_id: "<YOUR-TENANT-ID>"
         client_id: "<YOUR-CLIENT-ID>"
         client_secret: "<YOUR-CLIENT-SECRET>"
         poll_interval: 60  # Optional

Configure a suffix for Service Desk alias email

You can set a custom suffix in your project’s Service Desk settings.

A suffix can contain only lowercase letters (a-z), numbers (0-9), or underscores (_).

When configured, the custom suffix creates a new Service Desk email address, consisting of the service_desk_email_address setting and a key of the format: <project_full_path>-<custom_suffix>

Prerequisites:

• You must have configured a Service Desk alias email.

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project.
2. Select Settings > General.
3. Expand Service Desk.
4. Below Email address suffix, enter the suffix to use.
5. Select Save changes.

For example, suppose the mygroup/myproject project Service Desk settings has the following configured:

• Email address suffix is set to support.
• Service Desk email address is configured to contact+%{key}@example.com.

The Service Desk email address for this project is: contact+mygroup-myproject-support@example.com. The incoming email address still works.

If you don’t configure a custom suffix, the default project identification is used for identifying the project.

Configure email ingestion in multi-node environments

A multi-node environment is a setup where GitLab is run across multiple servers for scalability, fault tolerance, and performance reasons.

GitLab uses a separate process called mail_room to ingest new unread emails from the incoming_email and service_desk_email mailboxes.

Helm chart (Kubernetes)

The GitLab Helm chart is made up of multiple subcharts, and one of them is the Mailroom subchart. Configure the common settings for incoming_email and the common settings for service_desk_email.

Linux package (Omnibus)

In multi-node Linux package installation environments, run mail_room only on one node. Run it either on a single rails node (for example, application_role) or completely separately.

Set up all nodes

1. Add basic configuration for incoming_email and service_desk_email on every node to render email addresses in the web UI and in generated emails.

   Find the incoming_email or service_desk_email section in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   incoming_email

   gitlab_rails['incoming_email_enabled'] = true
   gitlab_rails['incoming_email_address'] = "incoming+%{key}@example.com"
   

   service_desk_email

   gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_enabled'] = true
   gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_address'] = "project_contact+%{key}@example.com"
   

2. GitLab offers two methods to transport emails from mail_room to the GitLab application. You can configure the delivery_method for each email setting individually:

   1. Recommended: webhook (default in GitLab 15.3 and later) sends the email payload with an API POST request to your GitLab application. It uses a shared token to authenticate. If you choose this method, make sure the mail_room process can access the API endpoint and distribute the shared token across all application nodes.

      incoming_email

      gitlab_rails['incoming_email_delivery_method'] = "webhook"
      
      # The URL that mail_room can contact. You can also use an internal URL or IP,
      # just make sure mail_room can access the GitLab API with that address.
      # Do not end with "/".
      gitlab_rails['incoming_email_gitlab_url'] = "https://gitlab.example.com"
      
      # The shared secret file that should contain a random token. Make sure it's the same on every node.
      gitlab_rails['incoming_email_secret_file'] = ".gitlab_mailroom_secret"
      

      service_desk_email

      gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_delivery_method'] = "webhook"
      
      # The URL that mail_room can contact. You can also use an internal URL or IP,
      # just make sure mail_room can access the GitLab API with that address.
      # Do not end with "/".
      
      gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_gitlab_url'] = "https://gitlab.example.com"
      
      # The shared secret file that should contain a random token. Make sure it's the same on every node.
      gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_secret_file'] = ".gitlab_mailroom_secret"
      

   2. Deprecated in GitLab 16.0 and planned for removal in 18.0): If you experience issues with the webhook setup, use sidekiq to deliver the email payload directly to GitLab Sidekiq using Redis.

      incoming_email

      # It uses the Redis configuration to directly add Sidekiq jobs
      gitlab_rails['incoming_email_delivery_method'] = "sidekiq"
      

      service_desk_email

      # It uses the Redis configuration to directly add Sidekiq jobs
      gitlab_rails['service_desk_email_delivery_method'] = "sidekiq"
      

3. Disable mail_room on all nodes that should not run email ingestion. For example, in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   mailroom['enable'] = false
   

4. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

Set up a single email ingestion node

After setting up all nodes and disabling the mail_room process, enable mail_room on a single node. This node polls the mailboxes for incoming_email and service_desk_email on a regular basis and move new unread emails to GitLab.

1. Choose an existing node that additionally handles email ingestion.
2. Add full configuration and credentials for incoming_email and service_desk_email.

3. Enable mail_room on this node. For example, in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   mailroom['enable'] = true
   

4. Reconfigure GitLab on this node for the changes to take effect.