Using Aliases to Auto Reply to Inbound Email Actions

[TStark]

The situation: We have two email aliases (alias1@xyz.com, alias2@xyz.com) that we use for our requesters to send email requests to which are automatically forwarded to our Instance's email address to create Incidents. The incident is auto assigned to a specific Group depending on which alias the request is sent to.

The problem/question #1: Is it possible to bring in the requestor's email address so that I can associate the incident with this requestor? Note: I do have the option to remove the forwarding and just let the emails sit in the Inbox of the email aliases (alias1@xyz.com, alias2@xyz.com) if its possible for ServiceNow to scan and pull in data from the Inbox.

The Problem/Question #2: Is it possible to create auto reply emails from within ServiceNow that will reply to the requester using the same email alias that the requester sent the email request to? For example, A requestor sends an Incident to alias1@xyz.com. That request is automatically assigned to Group1 and an auto reply email is sent back to the requester from email address alias1@xyz.com informing them that the request has been received.

Thanks,
Tony

[Tony Chatfield1]

Hi, you should be able to configure email forwarding in your mail system/server so that the message 'To' is the XYZ alias, and 'From' remains as your users email address when SNC receives the message. In exchange I think this is a 'forward' setting for the XYZ address. Email notification messages have 'From' and 'Reply to' fields which allow you to control the details sent in your response notifications - although some mail systems may need tweaking to prevent the messages from being identified as spoofed email.

[Parneet1]

I believe this should be doable. Below are my pointers on these questions. Let me know if they fit with your requirement:

Q1. If the requestor exists in your user table, then fulfilling this requirement is one query away (use the below code in the inbound action):

var getUser = gs.createUser(email.from);

Using this, you identify the user and can assign it to any user field (caller/opened by/requested for etc.) using x.setValue('opened_by', getUser);

Q2. This can be achieved using notifications on incident table. You may create a generic notification to send to opened_by whenever an incident gets created, be it through inbound actions or using the Service Portal or any other way. But if you want to customize that email only for the users who are creating incidents by emailing to one of the 2 email addresses, you can identify that by using some specific values of certain fields on the incident form. For example, in point 1, you may set Contact Type to Active Monitoring. This can differentiate between the incidents created through inbound actions, Service Portal (here contact type should be Self Service). You might be able to identify another unique parameter to classify these incidents.

Let me know if you have further questions on these approaches.

[TStark]

I actually came up with a conceptual solution for this problem. We're currently testing to make sure it does exactly what is needed. I'll update this post once confirmed.

[Nahush kakkeri]

what was the solution implemented in the end