Inbound Email Update Action - Reply Prefixes Not Working

[lgustafson]

Hi All,

I have a client who has been struggling with updating incidents via inbound email actions.   According to the ServiceNow Wiki, a Reply inbound email action type should be created under the following conditions:

The email contains one of the following conditions and the table specified in the email matches the table of the inbound action:

1. A valid watermark that matches an existing record.
2. An In-Reply-To email header (when no watermark is present) that matches an existing record.
3. A subject line starting with a recognized reply prefix (when neither a watermark nor an In-Reply-To header is present) and a valid record number that matches an existing record.

However, emailing, for example, "re: INC0000001", or any variation of that as the subject, only creates a new record.   On further research, I found this SN Guru article stating that:

• Subject Prefix is insignificant (The system doesn't care if the subject starts with 'Re:', 'Reply:', or 'Chicken:')

Can anyone make sense of this for me?   Is the ServiceNow Wiki right, and I'm just doing something wrong?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Lesley

[Martin29]

The first place i`d have a look at is: System Mailboxes > Inbound > Received
There i would look for a message which should have been appended to an existing ticket as a reply (but didn`t).

What is shown in the field "Receive Type"? New, Reply, Forward?

Also if you select the record of the email in the "Received" list there`s an email log at the bottom of the page which tells you which of your inbound rules have been skipped and why. Maybe you can find a hint there.

Also in the inbound action the type needs to be correct. So the inbound action type should be "Reply" in your case.

You also may check the glide.email.reply_subject_prefix property via "sys_properties.list".

Regards!

Martin

[amadosierra]

Hi Lesley,

I have tried the different scenarios in Eureka and it has been able to find and update the incident as long as the Incident number or the watermark is in the subject.Subject line. What version is your instance running?

Below is the default Inbound Mail Configuration, just in case you need to check. Follow Martin advice and check the inbound rules as well.

[lgustafson]

Amado,

Are you saying you have had success updating a record by creating a brand new email with a subject line of re: INCXXXXXXX without a watermark anywhere in the email?

Thanks,

Lesley

[lgustafson]

To clarify, I am not having any issues with updating existing records using the watermark - that is working fine.   However, according to the SN Wiki, I should be able to create a brand new email and as long as it contains a reply prefix and the record number, it should recognize this as an update to a current record.   See quote:

A subject line starting with a recognized reply prefix (when neither a watermark nor an In-Reply-To header is present) and a valid record number that matches an existing record.

My emails with a subject line of re:INC0080393, for example, all have a Receive Type = New.   I looked in the email log entries (thank you showing me this, Martin) and the corresponding log entry reads:

Skipping 'Update Incident', email is type 'new', which does not match Inbound Email Action's type 'reply'

I have checked the system properties and the glide.email.reply_subject_prefix value is re:,aw:,r: - which is the default value.   Also, the instance is running Eureka.

So, it seems like the problem is that the system is not recognizing the reply prefix as a Receive Type = Reply.   Correct?

Thanks for your willingness to help,

Lesley