Inbound Email Ignored Due to Auto-Generated Headers & Notification Suppression Issue

[Yougander patel]

Issue: Inbound Email Ignored Due to Auto-Generated Headers & Notification Suppression

Hi Team,

I’m facing an issue with inbound email processing and notification behavior in ServiceNow. Below are the details:

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Scenario

• A client is sending emails from their ServiceNow instance.
• Subject format: LOIT-POIT56787
• Emails are sent to my instance: jik@servicenow.com
• These emails are auto-generated from their system.

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Problem 1: Inbound Email Ignored

• The emails are not creating incidents.
• From email logs, I see:

“Skipping script ‘Unsubscribe from Notification’, ignored by filter”
“Ignoring inbound email… matched user or email condition(s): ignored headers”
“The inbound email processing was bypassed due to its exclusion by the system filter.”

• Identified headers causing the issue:

  Precedence: bulk
  Auto-Submitted: auto-generated
  X-ServiceNow-Generated: true

• If I remove these headers and reprocess, the incident gets created successfully.

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Workaround Implemented

• Created a Power Automate flow:
  1. Email received at servicedesk mailbox
  2. Forwarded to a shared mailbox
  3. Headers effectively stripped
  4. Email sent to ServiceNow again
• Result: Incident is created successfully

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Problem 2: Notification Issue

• After incident creation:
  • I created a custom notification to send updates back to the client
  • Tried using the original subject (LOIT number) in the notification
• Issue:
  • Notification is not sent when using original subject
  • If subject is changed → notification is sent
  • Indicates system suppresses notification based on subject/header logic

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Additional Context

• The sender/user is not present in AD
• Likely treated as a system-generated or filtered sender

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Questions

1. Is there a recommended way to allow auto-generated emails (with these headers) without bypassing filters?
2. Can we override or ignore these headers safely within ServiceNow?
3. Why are notifications suppressed when using the original subject?
4. Is this behavior tied to:
   • Email filters?
   • Notification suppression rules?
   • Duplicate detection?

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Goal

• Allow inbound emails from external ServiceNow systems without workaround flows
• Ensure notifications are sent with original subject intact

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Any guidance or best practices would be really helpful.

Thanks in advance!

[Mark Manders]

That the subject doesn't allow for the email to be sent is weird. It's just a string. Can you check on the conditions? Because it can also be that the update of the subject triggers an email, while creation of the incident doesn't.

For the incoming email: check the System Address Filters and Email Filters. The OOB 'Ignore Header' Email Filter contains that X-ServiceNow-Generated:true header and ignores it. If you remove that from the conditions, the emails will be processed correctly.