Reading the DISPLAY NAME from an incoming email

[Jacob Saaby Ni1]

Hi everyone.

Ran into a perplexing thing today, which I would like your two cents on:

When receiving an email, it's pretty easy to get certain information from that email: Senders email address, subject, body etc.

But - what if I just want to get the display name of the email sender?

I see that it's in the From: in the header. So it says:

From: Jacob Saaby Nielsen <jacob@blabla.com>

How do I get the "Jacob Saaby Nielsen" part from the email headers?

Can't seem to find anything on that.

[Mark Roethof · Accepted solution]

Hi there,

I've searched recently though didn't find anything for this. I was expecting something like "email.user_id".

Ended up with a GlideRecord query on sys_user unfortunately.

See below. Note: this is only part of the whole code!

(function() {
	
	var emailParsed = email.body.caller;
	emailParsed = emailParsed.split(' ');
	
	var grUser = new GlideRecord('sys_user');
	grUser.addQuery('email', emailParsed[0]); // Though, what if this email is not unique?!
	grUser._query();

	if(grUser._next()) {
		var requested_by = grUser.getValue('caller');

If my answer helped you in any way, please then mark it as helpful.

Kind regards,
Mark

---

LinkedIn

[Jacob Saaby Ni1]

Hi Mark.

Haven't had time to test it yet. Easter Holiday here in Denmark, so it won't be sometime until next week I'll get around to it.

But I very much appreciate your reply, and will get back to you next week 🙂

[Jacob Saaby Ni1]

Hi Mark and ggg.

Thanks for your replies.

So, ggg - to answer: My requirement is, that in case the sender is unknown to me, I would like to create that sender, as a CSM contact.

For that, I need a name. The only way I can see where I can extract that, is from the email headers. Specifically from:

From:Jacob Saaby Nielsen <name@emaildomain.tld>

So. I believe what Mark answered is part of the solution. The splitting of the string, that follows what ServiceNow will interpret as a variable:value couple. As I understand how ServiceNow interprets variable pairs in an email is that it's variable:value.

So "from" becomes the variable name. And "Jacob Saaby Nielsen <name@emaildomain.tld>" becomes the value.

Using Marks' method, I can definitely see how I can split the value of from, into a string array, and access the various parts.

So from[0] will become "Jacob", from [1] will become "Saaby" and from [2] will become "Nielsen".

Which means that I should be able to do:

• var firstName = from[0];
• var surName = from[1] + " " + from[2];

Questions:

So, how do I access the email header part of the email, to begin with?

If I know that, I believe I can put together a script, which tests for a known user vs unknown user, and if unknown user, create a contact.

Even though the value part of the from differs wildly. But that part's out of my hands.

[Peter de Bock1]

@Jacob Saaby Ni1 

hi Jacob,

It has been a while, but I faced today a similar type of situation. Some scripting is required to get the display name from the "From" person when (s)he is unknown.

Below a script that did the trick and did some cleansing to. The script can be pasted in the Actions tab in an Inbound Action. I have tested it with several type of accounts, like Gmail, company accounts etc.

The "From" will be stored in this example in a separate field, though you could also create a contact or do anything else with it.

//If Consumer is unknown, than get the display Send From out of the mail header
    if (current.consumer.nil()) {
        var start = email.headers.indexOf('\nFrom') + 5;
        if (start > 0) {
            var end = email.headers.toString().substring(email.headers.toString().indexOf('\nFrom')).indexOf('<');
            var name = email.headers.toString().substring(start, start + end - 5);
            if (name.charAt(0) == ':') name = name.slice(1);
            name = name.replaceAll('"', '');
            current.u_opened_for_name = name;
        }
    } else {
		//Set name from Consumer when known
        current.u_opened_for_name = current.consumer.user.name;
    }

Regards, Peter