Asks with Email

Email Asks lets teams receive requests by email and turn each incoming email into an ask in Linear.

Available to workspaces on our Business and Enterprise plans.

Overview⁠

Use Email Asks when teams want to:

Accept requests through a familiar shared inbox or custom email address
Let requesters create asks without needing Slack or a Linear account
Keep follow-up conversation synced between email and Linear
Route incoming requests into a team’s Triage queue for review

Each incoming email creates a new issue in Linear using the email subject as the issue title and the message body as the description.

When an ask is submitted to a Linear team, it lands in that team’s Triage for review, prioritization, and assignment.

Senders receive a confirmation email letting them know future replies will stay synced to the same issue.

Requesters can keep the conversation going by replying to email, and teams can respond from the synced thread in Linear.

Configure ⁠

Create an intake email⁠

Go to Settings → Asks.
Click the + icon for Add Asks intake email.
Select the Linear team and, optionally, the issue template that should apply to incoming emails.
Copy the unique forwarding email created by Linear.

Set up forwarding from your custom address⁠

Configure your mail provider so that messages sent to your custom address are forwarded to the unique Linear intake email.

For example, you might forward mail from helpdesk@yourcompany.com to the generated Linear intake address.

Configure the reply sender email address⁠

If you want replies to appear from your custom email address instead of the default Linear address (issues@linear.app), add the DNS records provided in Asks settings to your DNS hosting provider.

You can also share those records with your engineering team for implementation.

If you skip this step, replies will still be delivered, but they will come from issues@linear.app instead of your own domain.

Configure email forwarding⁠

You will need administrator permissions to set up email forwarding in your Google Workspace.

We do not recommend using Google Groups to set up forwarding as it modifies email headers which can result in several downstream issues.

Refer to Google’s help documents in Forward email to a third-party CRM for more details.

Log into your Microsoft 365 Admin Center
Select the mailbox that you wish to configure forwarding for:
- Shared mailbox: On the admin center homepage, go to the Teams & groups > Shared mailboxes page. Select the mailbox, then select Edit in the “Email forwarding” section.
- User: On the admin center homepage, go to the Users > Active users page. Select the user, then the mail tab and select Manage email forwarding in the “Email forwarding” section.
On the “Shared mailbox” email forwarding side panel, select the “Forward all email sent to this mailbox” checkbox.
Enter your Linear intake email address copied from Linear Email Asks Settings
Select Save

Automatic forwarding needs to be enabled in your anti-spam outbound policy before trying to verify your forwarding setup. This is found in the Microsoft Defender portal.

Refer to Microsoft’s help documents in Configure email forwarding in Microsoft 365.

Refer to your provider’s routing/forwarding instructions.

Configure DMARC policy requirements⁠

These requirements matter when configuring replies to come from your own domain.

Linear Asks email integration supports a wide range of DMARC configurations, but domain alignment must be relaxed:

aspf=r (relaxed SPF alignment)
adkim=r (relaxed DKIM alignment)

Strict alignment (aspf=s or adkim=s) is not supported and will cause delivery or authentication issues:

Recommended default policy⁠

We recommend starting with a neutral monitoring policy:

v=DMARC1; p=none

This is our default recommendation because it does not interfere with existing email setups and allows domains to collect DMARC reports before enforcing stricter rules.

Enforced policies⁠

More restrictive policies are also supported as long as relaxed alignment is maintained, including:

p=quarantine
p=reject

Synced email thread behavior⁠

When an issue is created from an email, a synced thread appears on the issue in Linear.

That means:

Any new email reply to the original email thread appears in the synced thread on the issue in Linear
Any new comment in the synced Linear thread is sent as a new email to the email thread

This keeps all context centralized in Linear while allowing seamless communication with people who are not using Linear directly.

Customize auto-replies⁠

By default, Email Asks can send messages when an issue is created, completed, or canceled.

You can customize which of these messages are sent, along with their copy, in Settings → Asks → Email Intake → the relevant email address.

Enable customer requests to automatically link inbound emails to customers based on the sender’s email domain. This is useful when you want email asks to connect directly to customer context in Linear.

Limitations⁠

Linear Asks with Email is not designed to replace dedicated frontline customer support tools.

Features like first response times and NPS scores are not planned.

FAQ⁠

Yes. You can use per-account Gmail forwarding without Google Workspace admin permissions.

This requires a dedicated Gmail user account and a forwarding confirmation flow. Gmail will send an activation code to the Linear intake address, and that code must be entered back into Gmail settings.

If you see an error such as 550 5.7.520 Access denied or a message saying your organization does not allow external forwarding, Microsoft 365 is likely blocking automatic forwarding by default.

Microsoft 365 (Outlook) by default blocks automatic forwarding to external email addresses to prevent data exfiltration/phishing abuse, even if you set up an inbox rule to forward. You will need an admin to explicitly allow it in the Exchange or Defender policies.

Allow external forwarding as Exchange admin:

Navigate to Microsoft 365 Admin Center
Open the Exchange Admin Center (EAC)
Navigate to Mail Flow → Remote Domains
Edit the default (or relevant) remote domain (usually *)
Set “Allow automatic forwarding” to “On”

Fix via Microsoft 365 Defender UI

Go to https://security.microsoft.com/antispam
Go to Email & Collaboration → Policies & Rules → Threat policies → Anti-spam policies
Click into your Outbound spam filter policy (likely called “Default”).
Scroll down to the “Automatic forwarding rules” section.
Set it to “On – allow automatic forwarding”
Save the policy.

Double-check that forwarding is configured from your custom email address to the Linear intake email address.

A mismatch between those two addresses is the most common cause.