Add inbound replies to comments based on email subject/short description

[Marcel H_]

I have a requirement for one of our internal teams that I don't think is unique, and there have been quite a few posts I've found that make reference to what I need to accomplish for them, so hoping someone might be able to provide some additional help on this for me.

Basically we've got a mailbox (lets call it info@) that takes incoming email from various senders that the team processes. Recently we started to redirect (not forward) the mailbox to a custom email address in our Prod instance. This is working well and catches pretty much everything that comes into the mailbox (with the exception of a few domains that weren't whitelisted yet).

The problem that we're having though is:

1. All incoming mail is creating records (tickets) on a custom table
2. No notifications are sent back to the original sender from the instance (this may come later)
3. Replies back to the same email thread sometimes update the Additional Comments of the correct record, but other times it will create a new ticket for the same email thread
4. The times that duplicate tickets are created seems to be when someone that was perhaps on CC, or was forwarded the original email and then replies to the thread. I think that something flags it not as a reply, but a new email and it is processed that way
5. The replies aren't in response to a ServiceNow generated email with a watermark or even a ticket number in the subject line. I'm not sure how some replies are being matched and updating tickets while others are creating new tickets for the same email thread
6. The subject will be different for each email thread, so there is no single subject line that we can use to match, it will need to be dynamic

The end goal would be to match all incoming mail to any existing ticket in the custom table by subject/short description, and update Additional Comments (after which a notification is fired to let the assigned group know there is an update). If an existing ticket can not be found with the criteria a new record is created.

I've seen a few examples, but not sure what will really work effectively for this, and if I can get the criteria into a single inbound rule (or if I'll need one each for New, Forward and Reply)

Example from Marketing Request OOB rule:

if (current.getTableName() == "sn_sm_marketing_request") {
	var bodyText = email.body_text;
	if (!bodyText)
		bodyText = email.body_html;
	current.work_notes = "Reply from: " + email.origemail + "\n\n" + email.subject + "\n\n" + bodyText;	
	current.update();
}

From a community post:

var gr = new GlideRecord('incident');

gr.addEncodedQuery('short_description=' + email.subject + '^sys_created_on>=javascript:gs.minutesAgoStart(10)');

gr.query();

// If I find an email with this subject in the last 10 minutes, stop.

if(gr.next()){

     event.state = "stop_processing";

}

[SanjivMeher]

So we have similar use cases. What we do is we have a Create Security Request and Update Security Request.

If we get an email with subject 'Test' and people are in CC, we add the people in CC to the watchlist and set the subject as the short description of the ticket. The sender becomes the Opened By.

Now, If someone in CC replies back to that email, in the 'Create Security Request', we query Requests with same short description and then check if the Opened By or Watchlist matches the sender and Update the request Else Create the Request.

[Marcel H_]

Thanks Sanjiv, that sounds very similar to what I'll need to do then.

Currently I'm setting the Caller from the email Sender, and the Short Description from the email Subject. Should I also specifically set the Opened by as the Sender to make sure? Do you ever receive email where there is more than one email or person in the To line as well as CC, and if so is there a good way to handle that?

You also mentioned that you have 2 rules, Create Security Request and Update Security Request. Are all of the replies to email threads processed by the Create rule, and only replies to system generated email with watermarks processed by the Update rule?

To confirm, this is running in the script section of your Create Security Request inbound rule? Do you have any other conditions set up on the rule as well?

[SanjivMeher]

We do have multiple people in To and CC. We add people in To and CC to the Watchlist, except the ServiceNow Email ID, which will be in the To.

We have a Create and Update Inbound. 

Create Inbound has a higher order for ex 100 and Update has 50 as Order.

So all the requests are first picked by Update. Then it goes to Create. 

Both Create and Update has Stop Processing checkmark ticked.

Now when an email is sent, using Create, it will create a New Incident and Send a Response Back to the user with a watermark in the acknowledgement email. The Acknowledgement email will have a similar subject, but with a ticket number.

Now if the user himself or people in CC or To replies to the 1st email, it is first received by Update Inbound. But Update ignores it, since there is no watermark or the subject doesn't contain a request number. It then runs the Create Request inbound. What we do is in the Create Inbound, query subject with the short desc of the request and also remove the 'Re: ' from the subject and query.

If the user responds to theAcknowledgement email sent from ServiceNow, Update Inbound will pick it and process it.

[Marcel H_]

Great, that's all very helpful information. Do you ever have issues where the Caller/Opened by changes when someone other than the original sender replies to the email thread? The team I'm working with has reported this happening, and they just want to make sure once that's set it doesn't change.

Also, if you don't mind, I have two more questions related to the script you provided.

1. Is the "\n\n[code]" in the inc.comments line used to capture html and wrap it in code tags to be displayed in a field?
2. I see what looks like a variable "nrarray" that is being used to populate the watch list. How is that array being pulled so that people can be added to the watch list?

Thanks for your replies on this, I appreciate the help!