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Introduction

The Email channel turns the messages arriving at a support mailbox into tickets your Brain Studio agent can read and reply to. Each conversation is handled as a ticket with a number, an assigned team and a status, just like every other support channel. Unlike the other channels, mail doesn’t arrive directly: your existing mailbox forwards the messages to an address Jelou provisions when the channel is created. Your customers keep writing to the address they already know.
The channel uses Postmark as its mail provider. Jelou provisions the server automatically when the channel is created, so you don’t need your own Postmark account or any external credentials.

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Prerequisites

Before enabling the channel, make sure you have:
  • A support mailbox you can configure to forward messages (for example [email protected])
  • A Brain Studio project to hold the channel’s flows
  • A support team created in Jelou to assign the tickets to
And, depending on how replies should be sent:
  • With your own domain: access to the domain’s DNS panel, to add the DKIM and Return-Path records
  • Without your own domain: access to the mailbox replies will be sent from, to confirm the verification link Postmark sends
Inbound mail is only processed if your mailbox forwards the messages to the address Jelou provides. Without that forwarding the channel is created but receives nothing.

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Enable the channel

1

Open the Channels section

In the side panel go to Channels and choose Add channel. Select Email from the list of available channels.
2

Name the channel and pick the project

Type the name you’ll identify the channel by, then select the Brain Studio project and the agent that will handle the mail.
3

Enter the support address and the team

Type the email address the channel will handle and choose the support team the tickets will be assigned to.
Enter the address in lowercase and without spaces. This is the address the channel recognizes as its own when opening tickets.
4

State whether you'll use your own domain

Check the box if replies must be sent from your domain. If you leave it unchecked, Jelou verifies that single address and you don’t need to touch DNS.
5

Create and connect the channel

On confirmation, Jelou provisions the Postmark server, creates the bot and generates the two flows the channel needs to work: one for inbound mail and one for ticket closing.
6

Authorize sending

Depending on what you chose in step 4:
7

Set up forwarding from your mailbox

Copy the inbound address shown on the channel and configure your mailbox to forward messages to it. See Email forwarding.
8

Build the logic in Brain Studio

Open the project and edit the generated flows to define how the agent replies and what happens when a ticket is closed.

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Channel properties

Once the channel is created, its properties show:
Teams, signature, expiration and the blocked list can be edited later from the channel view, without recreating it. See Manage the Email channel.

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Supported content

The Email channel supports a very narrow subset of the blocks available on WhatsApp, because a mail reply is text and images, not an interface with controls. The channel also receives:
  • Customer attachments: the agent sees them as part of the mail context
  • Message body: the agent receives the subject and the full text, not just the subject

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Deliverability and free-mail domains

Jelou being able to send from an address doesn’t guarantee the mail reaches the inbox. These are two different things: authorization enables sending, deliverability depends on the mail being signed with your domain.

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Why it matters

When Jelou sends on your behalf, the mail carries a DKIM signature. If you added your domain’s records, that signature says your domain and matches the sender: the recipient trusts it. If you didn’t, the signature says Postmark’s domain while the sender says yours, and that mismatch is what spam filters evaluate.

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Free-mail addresses

If the sending address sits on a free-mail domain, there is no way to fix it: you cannot publish DNS records on a domain that isn’t yours. Affected domains:
  • gmail.com, googlemail.com
  • hotmail.com, hotmail.es, outlook.com, outlook.es, live.com, msn.com
  • yahoo.com, yahoo.es
  • yandex.com, zoho.com
With a free-mail address as the sender, the signature will never match the sender’s domain. Each recipient decides what to do with that mail: some deliver it, some send it to spam and some reject it. The result is inconsistent, not always a failure, which makes the problem hard to diagnose: it works with some customers and not with others.
This affects sending only. Receiving mail from free-mail addresses works normally: anyone can write to you from Gmail and the channel opens its ticket.

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Recommendation

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Channel limitations

In the builder, several nodes and tools aren’t available on the Email channel because mail has no way to represent them: there are no buttons, no bubbles, no interactive session.

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Unavailable nodes and blocks

  • HSM template
  • WhatsApp Flows
  • Buttons
  • List
  • Numbered list
  • Quick replies
  • CTA URL
  • Carousel
  • Video
  • Audio
  • Document and File
  • Sticker
  • Location
  • Contact
  • Contact info request
  • Webview

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Unavailable AI Agent tools

  • Call to action (send_call_to_action)
  • Transfer to agent (transfer_to_agent)
  • Jelou Shop

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Unavailable AI Agent options

  • Message splitting: on the other channels a long reply is split into several bubbles. Over mail each bubble would be a separate message, so the option isn’t shown.
The agent’s replies are sent as a single message. If your flow is designed around several consecutive bubbles, review it before connecting the channel.

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Next steps

Once the channel is connected:
  1. Send a test message to your support mailbox and confirm a ticket opens
  2. Check the execution logs in Brain Studio to verify the flow runs
  3. Confirm the reply reaches the original sender and not the inbound address
  4. Adjust the flow with the blocks the channel supports
Test with an address outside your organization, not another mailbox on the same domain. That way you verify the full path: forwarding, ticket creation, agent reply and delivery to the customer.