Inbound email classifed as Reply - trying to clarify the current OOTB logic

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hi there,

so I always understood the incoming emails to be classified as "Reply" type based on the below criteria:

1. There is a recognized watermark
2. There is a recognized "In Reply To" header or "Message-ID" within the headers
3. The subject starts with one of the defined "Reply" prefixes AND contains a valid ticket number.

If none of the above is true, it will be classified as New. But I have a case now, where a ticket has been manually created (Case), then I sent a completely new email, WITHOUT any reply prefix in the subject, only having the ticket number in the subject. And it was classified as a reply:

But HOW? That Message ID could not have been connected in any way to the existing Case. IT only exists within this single new email.

This leads me to believe that Reply prefixes don't really matter, and any time a valid ticket number is found in a "New" email's subject, it will automatically be reclassified as "Reply"?

Has anyone done some research into this and can share their thoughts? Thanks!

[priyasunku]

Hi @Tom Sienkiewicz - if there is no watermark it will check for the record number in subject or message body and if the record number is found then it would be considered as reply email. 

please refer the below link for more details. 

Inbound Email Actions

If my answer solved your issue, please mark my answer as ✅Correct & 👍Helpful

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Thanks for the link, but you will see that even in that article, they say "first ServiceNow checks subject line for prefixes". And only if Email is classified as reply or forward, it would check for watermark or ticket number.

So in my case it should not do that as Subject had no prefix... it should not even bother checking for watermark or ticket number.

I think the documentation may be a little misleading here and in reality it does ignore the prefixes and just looks for the ticket number in subject...

[MasonD]

Hi Tom,

I met the same issue during my work. May I ask if you get any solution to this problem?

Can we say that we would not be able to mark a email as "Reply" if the keywords condition is not satisfied, even we have the ticket number in the subject line?

[Tom Sienkiewicz]

Hi Mason,

sorry to say, I've not been involved with this area too much recently, if I remember correctly we ended up adding some Business Rule on sys_email table which I would not recommend normally. But I can't remember the details anymore... I'd suggest you reach out to SN Support with that issue - that's probably the best course of action, they may have a trick or two up their sleeve at this point.