Alternative to inbound email action - process for external non-users

[Sam Ogden]

Hi all,

We have created a scoped app to manage some tickets we get for one of our products.  These tickets are generated via a REST call from an external web page.  We then send a confirmation email from ServiceNow with the ticket number.  Communication is then done via email.

The users generating these tickets are not users in ServiceNow.  If users reply to the notification email (which includes a watermark) then we want the information to be added to the ticket.

Normally we could do this via an inbound email action, but as these are not from users in ServiceNow an inbound email action would not work.

We do not want to activate the GUEST user as we have encounted issues with this being active in the past.

How else could we get the incomming email information onto the ticket?

Thanks

Sam

[johnfeist]

Hi Sam,

I've run into similar issues when I had to allow emails from outside of our domain into our instance.  I'll share my experience and hope it has something in it that you can use.

Our setup is a little different than what you describe because all incidents for external users come via email.  To deal with that, I've had to set up shared mail boxes that receive the mail.  We're on Office 365 and those are free. I also needed to enable Guest.

From there I put the inbound actions to work.  The first action checks if the message is from Guest.  Anything from Guest that is not coming to one of the designated shared mailboxes goes straight to junk.  From there, it's mostly a question of the regular process of tagging the message to the correct incident, keeping in mind that the watermark may not always get recognized if the reply/forward has been circulated first.

Between the Office 365 and ServiceNow filters, I'm seeing almost no spam type content.  We've also implemented some specific filters on the inbox for legitimate email that for these purposes we consider to be junk.

In your case, if you enable Guest, you should be able to send anything from Guest that would create a new incident straight to junk.  From there, it's just a matter of replies and forwards.

I could go on for a lot more.  If you'd like more information please let me know.

Hope that helps.

:{)

Helpful and Correct tags are appreciated and help others to find information faster

[Brett Watson]

Kia ora John,

Fairly new to Service Now and came across your reply here and would love for you to 'go on for a lot more' 😃

We are trying to receive and process replies from external email and have them update existing cases.

We have an inbound action where the only thing in 'when to run' is that it is a reply, but when I reply to a Service Now generated email from an external email and check actions on email I see error string = Unable to locate sn_hr_core_case 3d2c6ea2dbe29010cf2fa03114961989 for inbound email processing.

Below is the inbound action script. If you can see anything immediately obvious I'd really appreciate your advice 😃

gs.include('validators');

if (current.getTableName() == "sn_hr_core_case") {

if (current.active)
{
current.comments = "reply from: " + email.origemail + "\n\n" + email.body_text;

if (email.body.assign != undefined)
current.assigned_to = email.body.assign;

current.update();
}
else gs.eventQueue('aklc.email.closure_reply', current, email.origemail);
}

Thanks,

Brett

[johnfeist]

Hi Brett,

First, are you replying to a message generated by ServiceNow and referring to a record in sn_hr_core_case that includes a ServiceNow watermark or the record number in the subject?  I have to ask this, are you hitting reply in your email client or manually addressing the reply?  If the later, be sure you are sending it to the right instance. If you open the table in list view, are you able to search for and find the sys_id that is being displayed in the error message?

What I would suggest is test to see if your script is even being called.  I do that like this:

var debug = true;
if (debug == true) {
	gs.log("Starting the inbound script","jaf");
}
gs.include('validators');

if (current.getTableName() == "sn_hr_core_case") {
	if (debug == true) {
		gs.log("Table is sn_hr_core_case","jaf");
	}

	if (current.active)
	{
		current.comments = "reply from: " + email.origemail + "\n\n" + email.body_text;

		if (email.body.assign != undefined)
			current.assigned_to = email.body.assign;

		current.update();
	}
	else gs.eventQueue('aklc.email.closure_reply', current, email.origemail);
}
if (debug == true) {
	gs.log("Table is NOT sh_hr_core_case","jaf");
}

gs.log will put your messages in the system log.  Adding the second argument, jaf, allows me to filter the log for source = "jaf" which eliminates a lot of other "stuff".  (jaf is my initials so you can replace that with anything you choose) The nice thing is when everything is working, just set debug to false and all the messages stop.

If the above doesn't get you on the right track, please follow up.  If you do, please include a screen print of the inbound action settings and a screen print of the entire email to which you reply that includes the subject and entire body.

Hope that helps.

:{)

Helpful and Correct tags are appreciated and help others to find information faster

[Brett Watson]

Kia ora John,

Thank you so much for the quick reply. I've said it on previous posts and I'll keep saying it, people like you are a huge part of what makes this community so great.

You've steered me in the right direction and I was able to solve the issue (which I have to admit was partly user error, i.e. mine).

Thanks again,

Brett