How to Forward Tickets to External Recipients in BoldDesk
When resolving a ticket requires input from someone outside your team—such as a customer, another internal agent, or a third‑party vendor—forwarding is the quickest way to share the right context without losing control of the ticket in BoldDesk. This feature lets agents forward either the entire ticket or a specific message to external recipients, making collaboration easier while keeping the original ticket and its workflow centralized in your help desk.
In this guide, you’ll learn how ticket forwarding works end-to-end: who you can send it to, how BoldDesk logs it as a Forward activity, what recipients receive by email, and how replies from forwarded recipients are captured back into the ticket activity thread for tracking. You’ll also see the key prerequisites (email notifications) required to ensure forwarded messages are delivered successfully.
Check out this video tutorial to learn more about forwarding tickets.
Prerequisites
To ensure successful delivery:
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Enable these email notifications:
- Ticket Forward Activity Created
- Ticket Forward Activity Replied
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Navigate to: Admin → Email Notification → Contact tab.
If these notifications are disabled:
- Forwarded emails will not be delivered to the recipients.
- Communication gaps may occur.
- Customers and third-party vendors cannot view forwarded activity in the portal.
- They can only view conversations via email.
- If they respond to the email, their reply is recorded in the ticket activity and can be monitored within the forwarded activity thread.
Ways to Forward Tickets
- Forward the entire ticket
- Forward a specific reply or note
Forwarding the Whole Ticket
Steps:
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Open the ticket.
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Click Forward (above the ticket title).
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A form appears (similar to creating an activity).
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Enter:
- Recipient email addresses
- CC addresses (optional)
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Add:
- Title
- Description
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Select messages and attachments to share.
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Default status: Closed (can be changed).
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Optional fields:
- Assignee
- Due Date
- CC
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For file attachments, you may select:
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From ticket attachments
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Upload manually
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Or no attachments
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Forwarding a Specific Reply
Steps:
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Click the three dots next to the reply.
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Select Forward ticket.
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Choose attachments to include (based on selected message). You can choose to share selected messages, all previous messages, or no messages.
- The details of the ticket requester are not included in the forward activity email notification; however, they may be manually added in the Description section when forwarding.
- When opening the Forward Ticket modal from a ticket or a particular ticket reply, BoldDesk does not automatically insert the agent’s signature in the initial Description (creation form). Once the Forward is created, comments added in the Forward activity do automatically include the configured signature (personal, brand, or common), just as in regular replies.
- When you forward a ticket to another contact using the ‘To’ field, only that contact receives an email notification for the Ticket Forward Activity under the Contact tab. The original requester will not be notified unless added in the ‘To’ or ‘CC’ fields during forwarding. To ensure these notifications are sent, enable the event “Ticket Forward Activity Created.” If disabled, no email will be sent, but the activity will still appear under the Activities tab in the ticket.
Tracking Forwarded Activities
All the forwarded tickets for the specific ticket will be listed in the Activities tab of the ticket details page.
The Forward Ticket activity, which is actionable, can be tracked globally using the activity module by filtering its type as “Forward”. This activity can also have an assignee, due date, and status for subsequent tracking purposes. Explore How to View all Forwarded Tickets using Activities module.
Permission for Forwarding a Ticket
Agents need:
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Forward ticket permission under the Ticket module. Explore Managing Roles and Permissions in BoldDesk.
Here are some additional things to keep in mind when forwarding tickets:
- Updates or replies from external recipients won’t affect the ticket.
- External recipients will be added as contacts in BoldDesk if not existing.
- No contact invitation email is sent when creating a new contact.
- Non-agent users in To or CC of forwarded emails can’t view conversations in the portal, only via email.
- Only agents see forwarded activity in the agent portal.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Q1: Do forwarded recipients see ticket history in BoldDesk?
No, they only see the forwarded content via email.
Q2: Can forwarded activities be tracked globally in BoldDesk?
Yes, using the Activity module with filters.
Q3: Can I forward tickets to multiple external recipients in BoldDesk?
Yes. You can add multiple email addresses in the recipient and CC fields when forwarding.
Q4: What happens in BoldDesk if a recipient replies to a forwarded email?
Their reply will be recorded as a comment in the ticket activity, similar to a normal ticket response.
Q5: Do forwarded recipients need a BoldDesk account?
No. External recipients can interact via email without accessing the BoldDesk portal.
Q6: Can I forward attachments within tickets in BoldDesk?
Yes. You can select attachments from the ticket or upload new files when forwarding.
Q7: What permissions are required to forward tickets in BoldDesk?
Agents need the Forward ticket permission under the Ticket module.
Q8: Is it possible to automatically set the status of an existing Forward activity to “Closed” when a ticket is changed to “Solved”?
No, BoldDesk doesn’t provide an option to automatically update the status of a Forward activity when the ticket status changes.
