Email filters
Summarize
Summary of Email filters
Email filters in ServiceNow allow you to specify rules for handling inbound emails by either ignoring them or moving them to specific mailboxes. Ignored emails are saved in your instance but are not processed, and can be accessed via theirEmail [sysemail]records. The Email Filters plugin (com.glide.emailfilter) is activated by default in releases after Kingston; earlier releases require manual activation.
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Key Features
- Default Email Filters: Available under System Mailboxes > Administration > Filters, these include:
- Ignore VCAL: Ignores emails containing vCalendar requests to prevent unnecessary incident creation.
- Ignore header: Ignores emails with specific headers, overriding the glide.pop3.ignoreheaders property.
- Junk email - sender equals recipient: Moves emails from the SMTP user themselves to the Junk folder.
- Ignore subject: Ignores emails with certain terms in the subject line, overriding glide.pop3.ignoresubjects. This may not apply to unknown users, who can be locked out.
- Move spam to junk folder: Routes emails identified as spam (via the X-ServiceNow-Spam-Status:Yes header) to the Junk folder.
- Filter Actions: You can configure actions such as Mark as Ignored or Move to Junk. Custom action scripts can also be used for additional email processing.
- Email Filter Script Include: The EmailUtils script include provides utility functions, such as detecting vCalendar content for filtering rules.
- Spam Scoring and Virus Scanning: ServiceNow assesses inbound emails for spam likelihood and virus infection, adding headers to support filtering and automatically ignoring infected emails. This functionality requires use of the ServiceNow email infrastructure.
Key Outcomes
- Efficient management of inbound emails by filtering out irrelevant or potentially harmful messages.
- Reduction in unnecessary incident creation triggered by email responses containing calendar data.
- Improved email security through spam detection and virus scanning integrated into the email processing workflow.
- Customizable filtering rules and actions to align with your organization's email handling policies.
Specify which inbound emails to ignore or move to a particular mailbox.
When an email is ignored, the email is saved to your instance but is not processed. You can access an ignored email by viewing its Email [sys_email] record.
The Email Filters (com.glide.email_filter) plugin is active by default for releases after Kingston, for releases before Kingston, it needs to be activated, for more information see Activate email filters.
Default email filters
By default, the following filters are available from the module:
| Filter | Description |
|---|---|
| Ignore VCAL | Ignores all email containing vCalendar requests. This filter prevents inbound email actions from creating unnecessary incident records when the instance receives a response to sent email. vCalendar requests in email responses are identified by the EmailUtils script include. |
| Ignore header | Ignores email that contains specific headers. This filter overrides the glide.pop3.ignore_headers property. |
| Junk email - sender equals recipient | Filters out emails that are from the same user as the SMTP user to the Junk folder. |
| Ignore subject | Ignores email with specific terms or phrases in the subject line. This filter overrides the glide.pop3.ignore_subjects property. This filter might not apply to emails arriving from unknown users. Unknown users can be locked out. |
| Move spam to junk folder | Moves email identified as spam to the Junk folder. This filter checks for the value
of the ServiceNow spam header. If the header is
X-ServiceNow-Spam-Status:Yes, the filter moves the email to the
Junk folder |
To learn more about enabling spam scoring and filtering, see Email spam scoring and filtering (instance security hardening) in Instance Security Hardening Settings.
Email filter script include
Email filters use a script include called EmailUtils that contains a simple
utility function to determine if vCalendar is in the body of the response
email. The results of this query are used in a condition script in the Ignore
VCAL email filter.
Spam scoring and virus scanning
Every message sent through email servers is assessed for the likelihood of being spam. Based on this assessment, the instance adds headers to each message that can be used for filtering within the customer instance using the Email Filters plugin.
The system also adds the X-ServiceNow-Virus:INFECTED header to an email
that contains one or more virus-infected attachments. The system ignores the email.
Spam scoring and virus scanning are available only for instances that use the ServiceNow email infrastructure. For more information on spam scoring and filtering, see KB0549426.