Setting Up Channels

What are channels?

A channel is a connection between your customers and your support team. When a customer sends you an email or starts a chat on your website, that message needs to end up somewhere your team can see it, reply to it, and track it. Channels are how that happens.

There There supports two types of channels: email channels and support widget channels. You can create as many of each as you need. For example, you might have one email channel for general support and another for billing questions, plus a widget on your website for quick questions.

Why do you need to set up a channel?

Your customers already have an email address they write to, like support@yourcompany.com. That mailbox lives with your email provider (Gmail, Outlook, or wherever you host your email). Setting up a channel tells There There about that address, and then connects the two so that incoming emails automatically become tickets your team can work on together.

Without a channel, There There has no way to receive your customer messages. The channel is the bridge between your existing email setup and your helpdesk.

Setting up an email channel

The setup has three steps. There There walks you through each one inside the app.

Step 1: Create the channel

Go to Settings > Channels and click to add a new email channel. You will need to provide a name (something descriptive like "General Support"), the email address your customers write to (like support@yourcompany.com), and a color so you can quickly tell channels apart in your inbox.

Step 2: Set up email forwarding

This is the key step. You need to tell your email provider to forward a copy of every incoming message to There There. Your original mailbox keeps working exactly as before. You still get every email in Gmail or Outlook. The only difference is that a copy also goes to There There, where it becomes a ticket.

Think of it like mail forwarding when you move house: the post office sends a copy to your new address, but the old one still works.

The channel setup page shows you the exact forwarding address to use, along with step-by-step instructions for Gmail, Outlook, and other common providers. For the full guide with troubleshooting tips, see Email Forwarding.

Step 3: Configure DNS records

DNS records let There There send emails on behalf of your domain. When your team replies to a ticket, the customer sees the reply coming from support@yourcompany.com, not from some other address. That requires three DNS records: one to prove you own the domain, one for email authentication (DKIM), and one for handling bounced messages.

If you have never edited DNS records before, don't worry. The setup page shows you exactly what to add, and most DNS changes take just a few minutes. See DNS Configuration for detailed instructions for popular DNS providers like Cloudflare, Namecheap, and Google Domains.

Once all three records are verified, your channel is fully operational: it can receive emails through forwarding and send replies from your domain.

Setting up a support widget

Support widgets let customers start conversations directly from your website without needing to send an email. You add a small code snippet to your site, and a chat bubble appears in the corner.

Go to Settings > Channels and create a new widget channel. You can customize the widget's position, color, welcome message, and placeholder text to match your brand. After saving, you get a widget ID and an embed code to paste into your website. See Support Widget for the full embedding guide.

Testing your setup

After completing the setup for an email channel, send a test email to your channel's address from a different email account. It should appear as a ticket in There There within seconds. If it does not arrive, check the Email Forwarding troubleshooting section.

Controlling who sees what

By default, all workspace members can access every channel. If you want certain team members to only see tickets from specific channels (for example, only billing staff sees the billing channel), you can restrict access in the channel settings. Owners and admins always have access to all channels regardless of these settings.