Inbound Email actions and email properties
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‎10-24-2019 11:55 PM
We have configured our environment so we only have active new and reply inbound email actions. No active forward actions. We also set glide.email.forward_from_prefix = '' and glide.email.forward_subject_prefix = ''. Instead we moved all forward prefixes to the reply property glide.email.reply_subject_prefix.
Our intention is that any forward with a watermark will be classified as Reply, and put into the matching ticket, and all other forward will be classified as New, and a new ticket will be created.
However even though the email properties are now empty there are still emails that the system classifies as Forward. How is this possible, and what can we do fix this? Any ideas?
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‎10-25-2019 12:07 AM
Hi, have you checked the headers of unexpectedly classified emails to confirm they are covered off by your existing reply prefixes?
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‎10-25-2019 12:16 AM
Thats strange. Those 2 properties are used to determine whether the type is forward or reply.
Could you check the incoming emails (latest after you made the change) and check if the subject contains fw is considered as forwarded or anything else?
Another option is to set some other random prefix in forward properties and check once.
Refer to this link. it might help.
Mark the comment as a correct answer and also helpful if it helps.
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‎10-25-2019 01:22 AM
Here is a slightly updated flow for New York but essetial it's the same as in Geneva.
https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/newyork-platform-administration/page/administer/notification/concept/c_InboundEmailActions.html#c_InboundEmailActions
According to this the first thing that happens is that ServiceNow checks if the email is a forward based on first trying to match the prefixes in "glide.email.forward_subject_prefix property" with the email subject, and second if it can find a match the "property glide.email.forward_from_prefix" in the email header.
Only if both these are true the type should be set as Forward. And since we have no information in any of these email properties it should not be possible for ServiceNow to set any incoming email as Forward from my understanding. However it does, sometimes.
Next it checks if the email contains a watermark. If it does the Type is set as Reply. If there's no watermark it then checks in the email body contains any recognizable Reply-To messageID. What messageID is I'm not sure. From what I know Reply-To usually only contains an email address. Anyway if this also fails if finally checks if the email subject can be matched with the "glide.email.reply_subject_prefix" property or if it contains a recognized record number.
If all this fails the stat is finally set to New. In other word there shouldn't be any way an email can be set as Forward if the Reply check fails. Since the Forward check happens before the Reply check. It should end up as New in this case.
When the type is set all the inbound email actions run. We don't have any Forward actions but that shouldn't be a problem since the type should never be Forward. But in practice this just seems to not be true. Somehow we get a few email a day that is marked as type Forward. All these do have a forward prefix (ie fw, FW etc).
So my question is, have I understood the process correctly? If yes I suppose my next step will be to contact Hi Support.
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‎10-25-2019 03:18 AM
I found som additional information below
"Emails with certain prefixes trigger the forward type of inbound email action. ... Emails with these prefixes trigger inbound email actions of the type forward. ... If the value of the system property is empty, then the system reverts to using the values fw: and fwd:."
So leaving the property "glide.email.forward_subject_prefix" empty doen't have the effect I thought. However I find the rest more ambiguous. In the flow chart in the link below as far as I can tell the type is set before any Inbound Actions are actually run.
However "Emails with these prefixes trigger inbound email actions of the Type Forward" suggest that it only takes a prefix to trigger a rule regardless the Type. So not really sure what is correct.
Either way the first thing I need to do here is to adjust the email properties again and try to re-try from there.
