Greetings ​@martinj_uk. Thanks for contacting Freshworks community. 

I understand your question about automatic email notifications. When toggled on, these notifications will be sent to all customers with all tickets, so selecting specific groups or types to receive them is not feasible. 

However, a workaround is available to set up an automation to skip email notifications under certain conditions, such as contact, type, ticket fields, and groups. I have provided a screenshot for you to look at. Could you try implementing this workaround?

 Also, if you are referring to email notification as the first response to the ticket, please be informed that emails sent by automations or email notifications will not be considered a first response.

Instead, you can add a public note using scenario automation. Feel free to let us know if I need to include something here.

Thank you.
Sujitha Dhanaseelan.
Learn something new today, get recognized for your contributions, stay on top of product updates and build meaningful connections in our Freshdesk community. Fresh ideas, quality service.

To improve control over Freshdesk’s Auto Email feature, many users likely want more flexibility with triggering emails based on specific ticket conditions. While the current setup is On/Off, you can leverage automation rules for better customization by limiting emails to non-SLA tickets or specific groups. If this is a common need, supporting the Ideas Forum post could prompt Freshdesk to consider a more granular solution.