Seeking advice on setting up Out of Office (like Outlook) in ServiceNow

[Amit Rao]

Hello Experts,
We've been asked to setup Out of Office functionality (like Outlook) in ServieNow when Question area's field Out of Office ticked then ServiceNow should add the OOO message to the notification body. So, caller will know that there will be a delay in response.

Here is our Ticket form when someone sends an email this type of Ticket get created. (by inbound action, ignore the caller field)

You can see in the above form there is field named Question Area, that record having Out of Office (checkbox) field as following, (please assume Question Area name is Kolding - Orders)

Now, here is the tricky part comes, there are several Question Areas (around 30), there is always ticket get created with different Question Area. Now we need to setup in such a way that when Owner ticked specific Question Area's Out of Office field and put the date in Starts and Ends along with Email message, then during mentioned date range Email message should be added to the notification body. And when current date reaches/equals to Ends date, then automatically Out of Office field get unticked and there will be no Email message added to the notification body. We have notification like Ticket creation(trigger when new Ticket get created)

Our logic should check for those ticket's which is having Question Area's field Out of Office ticked, if it does then it should work as mentioned above.

I was thinking

• Do I need to create notification for each Question Area? (because the Email message could be different for each Question Area)
• If I don't need to create several notifications then what happen when more than 1 Question area's have been setup as Out of office?
• Will mail script add the Email message in notification body?
• How will I calculate the date range? (because notifications should be triggered only during mentioned date range)
• As soon as Ends date over then, will schedule job make Question Area's field Out of Office automatically get uncheck? (if it does then it should run daily, correct?)

I'd like to hear from you guys what would be your approach to setup this.
Please suggest, thanks.

[Pranesh072]

Looks like a nice idea, I tried to understand the Question Area Scenario.

According to my understanding you need to create only one mail script, in which you can dynamically fetch the question area details and also checks the out of office condition. it will be easy of maintain. This covers first 3 questions.

How will I calculate the date range?

You dont need to. In your mail script you can check using "out of office" checkbox, if its true, include the message and if dont, then dont include the message.

As soon as Ends date over then, will schedule job make Question Area's field Out of Office automatically get uncheck? 

If you have only date then you can create a scheduled job which can run after midnight and update the checkbox according to enddate field.

In another scenario, if you may have date time field then scheduled job approach will not work. In that case you can use "gs.eventQueueScheduled" which will fire an event with some delay(in this case it will be the endtime) and use script action to update the out of office checkbox.

let me know if you need any suggestions

[Amit Rao]

Thanks Pranesh, for your advice.
One question regarding adding email message in notification body via mail script.
We got notification Ticket Creation where we need to add email message in the notification body, I'd like to know what happen when two Question Areas have been setup out of office checked.
2 different email message (from 2 Question Area) and one email notification.
How will our logic handles this situation?

[Pranesh072]

I'm little confused. can you give some examples and screenshots. What notifications you have how do you trigger them..

[Amit Rao]

Hi @Maik Skoddow 

Any thoughts on this?