Inbound email from another ServiceNow instance

[robbika]

We have an issue of receiving an email from another ServiceNow instance.

The problem is that a watermark is included in the message, so on our instance it first looks up the watermark and then rejects the message because it doesn't find the watermark.

Is there some way to get the message processor to ignore the watermark in an email just for certain messages or users?

[tony_barratt]

Hi Robert,

What do you mean by "rejects the message"?

Incoming email are processed like so:

Inbound Email Actions - ServiceNow Wiki

And watermarks are matched like so:

Inbound Email Actions - ServiceNow Wiki

3.4.1 Examples of Matching Watermarks in the Subject Line or Body

The following examples illustrate how ServiceNow matches watermarks in an email's subject line or body.

Subject Line or Body Contents	Matching results
Ref:MSG0000008	ServiceNow recognizes this as a watermark and searches the Email Watermarks [sys_watermarks] table for a record with the number MSG0000008. If this watermark exists, ServiceNow matches the email to the associated record. If this watermark does not exist, ServiceNow uses the inbound action for new emails to create a new incident, and associates the new incident with the email.
Ref:MSGWTR0000008	ServiceNow recognizes this as a watermark and searches the Email Watermarks [sys_watermarks] table for a record with the number MSGWTR0000008. If this watermark exists, ServiceNow matches the email to the associated record. If this watermark does not exist, ServiceNow uses the inbound action for new emails to create a new incident, and associates the new incident with the email.
Ref:WTR0000008	ServiceNow recognizes this as a watermark and searches the Email Watermarks [sys_watermarks] table for a record with the number WTR0000008. If this watermark exists, ServiceNow matches the email to the associated record. If this watermark does not exist, ServiceNow uses the inbound action for new emails to create a new incident, and associates the new incident with the email.
MSG0000008	ServiceNow does not recognize this as a watermark because it does not start with the Ref: prefix. It uses the inbound action for new emails to create a new incident, and associates the new incident with the email.

I would surmise that the email from the other instances are not set to the expected type ie New, Forward or Reply.

What Type are you seeing? New? What Type are you expecting Reply?

You could perhaps handle the incoming emails with some custom code in an inbound action?

Best Regards

Tony

[poyntzj]

Try adding a new inbound action with a lower order number that is based on a condition of the other instances email address or an if statement at the top of the existing one.

Whatever, make it process as you want / need

We ebond over email with a couple of vendors - but they do not use Servicenow so I cannot easily check the watermarking

When I do ebond, each vendor has their own specific Script Include so I can look for specific information based on the 3rd parties formatting of their emails.

I use a the correlation_id field to store their ticket ID, and I prefix with their name - so if any 3rd party have ticket ID's that are similar to each others or ours, it does not get confusing

[Deepak Ingale1]

Hi Robert,

You can write Before Insert BR on sys_email table of source instance with

condtion:

current.direct.toLowerCase() == 'Lower case email Of your target instance' // Direct is person / user who will receive this email

Script:

current.body = String(current.body).replace(/Ref\:MSG(?:[0-9]*)/i, "");

current.body_text = String(current.body_text).replace(/Ref\:MSG(?:[0-9]*)/i, "");

ServiceNow to ServiceNow E-mail Integration

Omit watermark from scheduled report emails

[Dub Myers]

This is an old post, but adding this information here in case someone happens upon this post looking for an answer to the issue of instance-to-instance emails having accidentally matching watermarks:

Introduced in Jakarta, you can enable randomized email watermarks and configure appropriately to avoid instance watermarks overlapping.

Once your instance uses randomized watermarks exclusively, another instance's watermarks (randomized or not) will not accidentally match.

The introduction of this feature was in Jakarta. Release Notes

The feature is described in the documentation.