Is it native behavior for ServiceNow to generate multiple email candidates and mark one as Ignored?

[ivettemarti]

Hello ServiceNow Community,

I am currently analyzing an email notification behavior and I would like to confirm whether this is expected/native ServiceNow behavior or if there may be something else in the configuration causing it.

The notification is triggered by the event `approval.rejected.by.other`.

We have a notification that appears to be triggered only once for the same record. However, when reviewing the `sys_email` records, ServiceNow generates two email records related to the same notification/target record:

One email is created with the state `sent`.

Another email is created with the state `ignored`.

After comparing both `sys_email` XML records, they seem to be very similar and appear to be generated as email candidates for the same notification process. Based on the analysis, our current understanding is that ServiceNow may generate multiple email candidates during notification processing, especially when recipients are resolved from different sources or when the same recipient is included more than once. Then, during email processing, ServiceNow sends only the valid email and marks the duplicate or non-deliverable candidate as `ignored`.

So far, this looks more like a native email notification behavior rather than the notification actually being sent twice to the end user.

Can someone confirm if this is expected/native ServiceNow behavior?

Specifically:

Does ServiceNow normally generate multiple `sys_email` records as candidate emails during notification processing?

Is it expected that one of them may be marked as `ignored` when ServiceNow detects a duplicate, invalid, or already processed recipient?

Is there any official documentation or known behavior that explains why one email is `sent` and another one is `ignored` for what appears to be the same notification/event `approval.rejected.by.other`?

Thank you!

[Kieran Anson]

Yes this is expected behaviour.  

You can get some context of this from the below knowledge article. However it's not exactly targeting the scenario you're seeing, but similar mechanisms are occurring 

How email notification weight works - Support and Troubleshooting - Now Support Portal

The business rule 'Ignore duplicates' is likely the BR that is setting your email to ignored