Email notifications issue while profiles are inactive in serviceNow

[Mani Arigala]

Hi All,  

We need your help. We have observed an issue in our ServiceNow instance.  

We configured an email notification to trigger when an SCTASK is closed as Completed. However, the same email address was also created in ServiceNow as a contact. While the contact record was active, the emails were triggered correctly from SCTASK. Once we deactivated the contact in ServiceNow, the emails stopped triggering when SCTASK is closed as Completed.  

Could you please confirm if there is a relationship between the Active/Inactive status of a profile and the triggering of email notifications?  

Thanks,  

Mani Arigala 

[Deėpak Sharma]

Hi @Mani Arigala  

Yes, there is a direct relationship here. This is standard OOB behavior in ServiceNow.

The system is designed not to send outbound emails to any user or contact profile that is marked as inactive. When your SCTASK triggers the email, the outbound engine looks up the recipient address in the sys_user and customer_contact table. Because it finds that exact email address linked to an inactive profile, it automatically skips sending it.

As mentioned by Tanushree, you can reference KB2969127 which documents this exact scenario.
If you absolutely need to keep that specific contact record tied to that email, you can set the profile back to active, but check the "Locked out" box. This allows the email engine to send notifications while still preventing any login access.

Happy to help! If this resolved your issue, kindly mark it as the correct answer ✅ and Helpful and close the thread 🔒 so others can benefit too.

Warm Regards,

Deepak Sharma

Community Rising Star 2025

[Mani Arigala]

Hi @Deėpak Sharma ,

Thanks for sharing the details, 

The profile is extended as user table and deactivated but sometimes the mails are generated from case table not from the SCTASK table.

If possible, can you please share the steps for how to check the OOB configuration in serviceNow.

Thanks

Mani Arigala 

[Deėpak Sharma]

hi @Mani Arigala  

When an email is passed as plain text like manually entering an address into a Watch list or passing current.contact.email as a string parameter in gs.eventQueue() and system treats it as an external guest address, because of that it bypasses the inactive user check completely.

To verify why one triggers and the other doesn't:

1. Go to System Logs > Emails (sys_email.list).

2. Find the successful email sent from the Case record and the ignored one from the SCTASK record, then check the Notification field on both.

3. Next, head over to System Notifications > Email > Notifications (sysevent_email_action.list) and open both notifications.

4. Open the Who will receive tab on each:

   • On the Case notification, check if Event parm 1 contains recipient (or parm 2) is checked. If yes, the event is likely feeding a raw email string into that parameter.

   • On the SCTASK notification, see if it is pointing directly to a reference field (like Users/Groups in fields). Reference fields look up the sys_user record directly, which causes the platform to drop inactive users.

Happy to help! If this resolved your issue, kindly mark it as the correct answer ✅ and Helpful and close the thread 🔒 so others can benefit too.

Warm Regards,

Deepak Sharma

Community Rising Star 2025