Inbound emails from someone NOT apart of the HR Case

[Rob Sestito]

Hey there SN Comm!!

I am looking to see what (if at all), others might be doing when it comes to allowing people that do not have access to view a Case/are not part of a Case - to be able to email into a Case.

Example:

recently we had a Case that was for one person, and they were the Requestor and Subject Person and Opened By (because they emailed into the system). The assigned to person of this Case, needed to reach out to the Requestor's manager. They did so, via emailing them from the Case itself. The manager then replied to that email from the Case. However, since they are not apart of the Case, and not in any assignment group from the system, their reply never reached the actual Case. It was ignored.

I reached out to SN with a HI Case because I was confused at first. I thought that if someone gets emailed from the actual Case, they would be able to reply and their reply would be posted to the Case. SN however, said that since the person being emailed does not have access to the Case (or apart of the Case in any way), that they cannot post anything to the Case - which includes their emails.

I then as a test, added that manager to the watch list, reprocessed their email, and it was posted to the Case.

We do not want to make this a thing, where we keep adding people to watch list, just to allow them to reply back to a Case when they are not actually involved in the Case.

First, does anyone out there know of this issue/scenario? Second, if you know about this, has anyone built anything as a work around? Is there something that can be done for this?

My initial thought was to create an addition field that is like the watch list field, but tie NO Out going emails like the watch list does. The watch list currently sends out emails for work noted AND additional comments, which we do not want. Especially when it is with someone not technically involved in the Case. But just reached out for additional information.

Thanks in advance!

-Rob

[Dsinghal]

Hi Rob,

Thanks for this. Quick question, at what point do you add users to the custom field - "u_additional_communication_list"? Is it before the email comes in?

We have a similar requirement, however we do not know who could be responding to the case email. We have team mailboxes. While the initial email may come from the team mailbox - which creates a case in ServiceNow, any subsequent exchange, regarding the case, could happen from any of the mailbox members own email address. We therefore want an ability to add the email sender to the watchlist, when the email comes in (possibly in the update case inbound action - believe restrict query would prevent that). I believe I could do this by making the Restrict Query BR inactive, but that's not advisable. Wonder if you or other community member have a better solution.

Thanks

[Rob Sestito]

Hello!

I have informed my team members to add a user to the u_additional_communication_list BEFORE emails go out, and save it to the record as well. This is for when they are reaching out to someone other than Requestor/Subject Person, etc. IF however, the additional communications list user(s) reply, and CC someone new, and that new person that was CCed emails back, their email won't hit the Case. I have built into my daily routine to monitor incoming emails from the inbox. Overall, it's working pretty well. There might be an email here or there throughout the week that I may have to deal with. But really overall, it's not bad. Maybe 5 min from my entire week I am doing something manually to incoming emails. And still, it's not even for this actual scenario.

Please let me know if you have more questions or need more explaining for this.

Thank you so much!

-Rob

[Dsinghal]

Cheers Rob. I have also done something similar where I have written a BR on email table to add any users in outbound email's "To" or "CC" list to the watchlist, unless they are in the opened for / subject field. Any reason why decided not to use the watchlist field, instead create a custom field?

We also have a daily report to monitor any emails which are not added to cases. These emails are managed manually.

[Rob Sestito]

Hey!

The reason why I took this route is because both Watch List and Collaborators are set up already to receive certain types of email notifications, to keep them updated on the Case. This custom field, is to simply give access to additional users to just Write (email) to the Case. Users within the custom field do not need to receive email notifications when Addition Comments / Work Notes are added to the Case.

Most common scenario for us would be:

Assigned To has a Case with both Requestor and Subject Person being either the same or different. However - The Assigned To might come across a point in time where they need to email the Requestor/Subject Person's Manager. The Manager would not have access to the Case as they are not in any assignment groups for SN, nor are they the Requestor / Subject Person. So, the Assigned To will then add the Manager to the custom field, save the record, and proceed to email them from the Case. The Manager will now have access to email back to the Case without their email being ignored/blocked.

That is why I went the route of using a custom field.

Hope I explained that well enough 🙂

Thanks,

-Rob

[jrusso]

Hi Rob,

Thanks again for sharing this.  I tried adding this to my Dev instance and tested an email reply from someone outside of the case and it worked.  However, when I logged back in the next day, i am getting an error message telling me it skipped the Restrict Query BR.  Did you come across this at all?  Here is the error message I am getting.  Any idea what is happening.  My BR script looks identical to yours.  Thanks.