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Winnowell: setup and user guide

What Winnowell does

Winnowell sorts the Zendesk suspended ticket queue with rules you write and test first. Each run starts as a dry run that shows what every rule will do; then Winnowell recovers and deletes in batches, tags what it recovered, and records every email it handled on an internal log ticket.

Requirements

  • Zendesk Suite (any plan) or Support Enterprise. Rules are stored as custom object records.
  • A role that can manage suspended tickets: admins, unrestricted agents on non-Enterprise plans, or a custom role with the suspended tickets permission on Enterprise.

Install

  1. In the Zendesk Marketplace, open Winnowell and choose Install. Pick a plan; the 14-day trial starts and Zendesk asks for a card. Billing starts when the trial ends unless you uninstall.
  2. Restrict the app to the roles or groups who review suspended tickets (Admin Center > Apps and integrations > Zendesk Support apps > Winnowell > Role restrictions).
  3. Settings:
    • Automatic recovery (off by default) and minutes between automatic runs (5 to 240, default 15).
    • Tag on recovered tickets (default winnowell_recovered).
    • Agents can edit rules (off: only admins change rules; agents can still run them).

Winnowell adds one custom object at install, "Winnowell rule". Zendesk keeps it if you uninstall; an admin can delete it in Admin Center > Objects and rules > Custom objects.

Rules

Open Winnowell from the left navigation bar and go to Rules, or open any suspended email in the queue and choose Make a rule from this.

  • Conditions (all or any): sender email, sender domain (a domain in a list also matches its subdomains), sender name, subject, message text, sent to (your support address), cause of suspension, brand, hours in the queue, has attachments, reply to an existing ticket, message ID. Operators include contains, is, starts with, ends with, is one of (a list, one per line), and matches the pattern (a regular expression, up to 300 characters).
  • Actions:
    • Recover: Zendesk's recover, keeping the original sender as requester.
    • Recover with a requester: for emails Zendesk will not recover as they are, such as "Received from support address". The requester is the address in a forwarded "From:" or "Reply-To:" line (never one of your own support addresses), or a fixed address you choose. Emails where no requester can be found stay in the queue and the dry run says so.
    • Delete: permanent. Only ever after a typed confirmation; never automatic.
    • Keep for review: leaves the email in the queue and stops later rules from touching it.
  • Order matters. Rules are checked from the top; the first match decides. Put "Keep" rules for customers and partners above broad delete rules. Use Up and Down to reorder.
  • Recover rules can add tags and an internal note naming the rule.
  • While you edit, the right side shows the emails in the queue that match.

Run

  1. In Suspended queue, click Run rules (dry run first). Or select emails and choose Recover selected, Delete selected, or Recover selected as a requester you type.
  2. The dry run shows how many will be recovered, deleted, kept and left alone; the matches per rule and where rules overlap; anything that matched but cannot be handled, with the reason; and the full list of what will be deleted. Nothing has changed yet.
  3. If anything will be deleted, type the confirmation shown (for example DELETE 214), then start.
  4. Keep the tab open while it runs. Stop after this batch ends the run cleanly.

Winnowell works through the whole queue (up to 20,000 suspended emails read, up to 10,000 handled per run) in batches of 100, waits when Zendesk asks it to slow down, and holds off when your account's API budget runs low so your team and other integrations keep working.

Audit trail and history

Each run creates an internal log ticket (tag winnowell_log), requested by and assigned to the person who ran it. It records the plan, then every email with its sender, subject, cause, rule, outcome and the new ticket number. Automatic runs write to one log ticket per day. Ticket comments cannot be edited, so the record stays as written.

History lists the runs. Open one to see its counts and a link to its log ticket. An unfinished run (stopped, or the browser closed) shows Resume: Winnowell continues with what is left of the plan you confirmed, skips anything already handled or no longer in the queue, and asks for a new typed confirmation if deletions remain. Emails that arrived after the run started need a new run.

Automatic recovery

  1. An admin turns on Automatic recovery in the app settings.
  2. Edit a Recover or Recover with a requester rule and tick Run automatically.

While at least one person with Winnowell has Zendesk open, Winnowell checks the queue every 15 minutes (or your interval), applies all your rules in order (so a Keep or Delete rule above still wins), and recovers only what an automatic rule decides, up to 200 emails per pass. It never deletes. Each pass is logged on that day's log ticket. Nothing runs while nobody has Zendesk open; Zendesk deletes suspended emails after 14 days, so review at least weekly.

Limits

  • Plans: Team up to 100 rules, Professional up to 250, Enterprise up to 5,000.
  • Zendesk cannot recover an email that has only attachments and no text, or one from a suspended user; Winnowell records Zendesk's reason on the log ticket.
  • When Zendesk refuses some emails in a batch, it does not report the ticket numbers of the others in that batch, so those are recorded without a number and not tagged. The log says so.

Data

Winnowell runs in your browser inside Zendesk, calls only your Zendesk account as you, and keeps nothing outside Zendesk. See the privacy policy: https://greatwork.company/apps/winnowell/privacy.

Help

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