How does ServiceNow know when the incident commenter is an ESS or an ITIL member

[David Carlin]

Hello,

I have been researching this topic for the past week and I cannot seem to find the answer. Currently in our instance, when an ESS user makes a comment on their incident, the email notification 'Incident commented for ITIL' fires and sends an email to the assigned to (if assigned to is not null). When the assigned to make a comment back the email notification 'Incident commented for ESS' fires and sends an email to the ESS. When any ITIL roled user (not assigned to) makes a comment on the incident, both email notifications are fired and both the ESS and assigned to receive emails.

I want to know how ServiceNow differentiates between what notification to send. It seems like it is determining what notification to send based on who makes the comment but I can't seem to understand how. I want to modify our notifications and add a forth notification option but I need to know how ServiceNow differentiates what to send first.

If this question isn't clear I can add more details or elaborate more!

Thanks!

David

[Michael Fry1]

It's when you look at the Advanced view of the notification that you can make sense of this. The 2nd line says...will not sent to the User who caused the notification to trigger...

So if the Caller adds comments, this notification won't trigger.

Same with if Assigned to adds comments, it won't send to himself unless Send to event creator is checked.

This is all tracked in Events.

[David Carlin]

Thanks for such a quick reply Michael!

This is exactly what I was missing. Knowing this now, I see a new issue presenting itself.

What I want to accomplish is to set up notifications so notifications send to a specific email address if a specific assignment group is selected (think helpdesk@example.com if Service Desk is the assignment group). If the Service Desk is not the assignment group, I want to follow normal email notification configurations and send to all the users of that group.

My issue is:

• If a user from the Service Desk (assigned to) makes a comment to the caller, it is sending an email to helpdesk@example.com and to the caller. 
• If the caller makes a comment, it is sending an email to helpdesk@example.com as well as the assigned to.
• If any other user (itil role user) makes a comment, it is sending an email to helpdesk@example.com, the caller, and the assigned to.

What I want to accomplish is that an email goes to helpdesk@example.com if the commenter is the caller. I do not want to email the Service Desk otherwise.

Knowing that ServiceNow is set up to exclude sending to the event creator now makes me question if this is possible.

Any input?

Thank you again!

David

[Michael Fry1]

What I want to accomplish is that an email goes to helpdesk@example.com if the commenter is the caller. I do not want to email the Service Desk otherwise. - add the email address helpdesk@example.com to the Group email field. Then notifications going to the group will go to the email address vs all the group members.

[David Carlin]

I am a little confused on your answer:

add the email address helpdesk@example.com to the Group email field. Then notifications going to the group will go to the email address vs all the group members.

What would I add this to? I have two notifications

1. Email to the ESS when any technician comments
2. Email to the Assigned To (or Assigned Group if Assigned To is empty) when the ESS or any technician comments.

I feel like I would need three notifications now:

1. Email to the ESS when any technician comments
2. Email to the Assigned To (or Assigned Group if Assigned To is empty) when the ESS or any technician comments.
3. Email to helpdesk@example.com whenever the ESS comments but not when the technician comments.

Based on your answer above what notification would I add the helpdesk@example.com to?