Show Email Details

[Mark Van Loock]

Hi,

I'd like to update Problem Task tickets from an email. The request is to have the "Show Email Details" link appear in the  activity journal the same way it does for Incidents.

I understand this is an OOB feature for Incidents, Requests and Changes so I'd either like to add PTasks to that list, or build something in Inbound Actions that does the same thing.

I hope someone can help.

Many thanks,

Mark.

[OlaN]

Hi,

To show email notifications on any task inherited table, you will need to show the activity formatter on the form.

Then you will need to decide what activities should be shown by configuring the filter on the activity formatter.

And lastly you will need to match incoming emails to the correct record in order for them to appear in the formatter.

You can look at the Docs on how to configure the activity formatter.
https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/tokyo-platform-administration/page/administer/form-administration...

I do have a question for you.

Is the intent that the end users should send email to problem tasks, and not to the Problem record itself?

OOB the configuration is set up as follows; the problem record (can also be applied to Incident record) should hold the communication between the fulfiller and the end user.
Problem tasks are intended for internal work, and is only seen by the fulfiller of the task, and not by the end user.

So moving forward with this might create some unwanted side effects.

[Mark Van Loock]

Hi,

Thanks for your reply. The team that want this communicate with 3rd parties who wont be accessing ServiceNow; their communication with us is via a shared mailbox, and we have rules that forward their inbound mail on to the Servicenow mailbox where their correspondence is linked to the open ticket. The 3rd party will quote either an INC or PTASK number in the subject line - Problem records are not used, and actually in their case the parent record of the PTasks are Change records.

This works fine for Incidents, and up until now the inbound action that updates PTasks has worked for them also, however when I insert email.body_text into current.comments, it loses it's formatting, and so the question has been raised why it can't just do the same that it does with the Incident tickets.

I found the activity formatter docs before, but frankly I was out of my depth, but if that's the only way then I'll persevere.

[Saurav11]

Hello,

There is already an OOB inbound action present to update the problem name "Update Problem".

To see the emails send or received in Problem check if the send/receive emails is ticked in the activity stream filter

Please mark answer correct/helpful based on Impact.

[Mark Van Loock]

Hi,

 I haven't yet been able to get this working. Maybe if I come at it from a different angle...

An incoming email contains the PTASK number from the problem_task table. These emails are ignored because it can't find a matching record in the incident or request tables.

Does anyone know where I can add the problem_task table to the list of tables the system searches in to find a matching record?

Thanks,

Mark.