Tender checks new messages for spam and moves what it catches out of the way, into your dashboard's spam folder. This article covers the settings, what to do with what the filter catches, and how to correct its mistakes.
Settings
The spam settings are in Account & Settings › Settings (Site Settings in the sidebar):
- Web spam protection chooses a CAPTCHA, the question that proves a visitor is human: Brain Busters (a simple question in words, easiest for people) or ReCAPTCHA (Google's). Tender only asks it of visitors who look like they might be spammers.
- Choosing either one also turns on Tender's spam filter for messages. None turns off both the CAPTCHA and the filter: nothing is checked for spam.
- Email spam protection extends the filter to messages that arrive by email. Untick it if legitimate email keeps getting caught.
Each category also has Don't check for spam (in the category's settings, under Manage Categories), for a category that receives automatic emails from a source you trust, such as your own app's alerts.
What gets checked
The filter looks at messages from customers. It doesn't check:
- your support staff's messages and internal notes,
- customers you've marked as trusted,
- replies in private discussions (only the first message of a private discussion is checked),
- customer emails your staff forward into Tender.
A message that's being checked is held for a moment before it appears. The person who wrote it sees a note that their message is being moderated; it shows up within seconds if it passes.
The spam folder
Click Spam in your dashboard's sidebar to see the messages marked as spam.
- Restore puts a real message back where it belongs.
- Delete forever removes spam for good.
Spam you don't delete does no harm there.
Marking spam yourself
If spam gets through, mark it so Tender learns from it:
- On a discussion, click Remove, then Mark as spam.
- On a single message, click Remove beside it, then Mark as spam.
- In a list of discussions in the dashboard, tick them and choose Mark as Spam from the Delete menu.
Only your support staff can mark spam.
When real messages are caught (false positives)
No filter is perfect, so look in your spam folder every so often. When you find a real message, restore it (Restore in the spam folder, or Mark as Ham on the message): Tender learns from each one, just as it does from each message you mark as spam.
A real message caught now and then is normal. If you're restoring more than a few a week, start a discussion with links to some of them, and we'll look into it.
Knowledge base feedback
Comments left with "Was this helpful?" ratings on your knowledge base are checked too. Caught ones don't count towards an article's rating. In the dashboard, under Knowledge Base › Ratings, choose the Spam filter to see them; tick ratings and use Spam, Not spam or Delete to sort them.