Accessing email object variables

  • Release version: Zurich
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Accessing email object variables

    In ServiceNow inbound email actions, thesysemailglobal variable provides access to the email object, enabling you to script responses and processing based on various components of an inbound email. This functionality is essential for automating workflows triggered by incoming emails.

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    Key Features

    • Access to Email Fields: The email object exposes key variables such as to, direct, and copied for recipient addresses, bodytext and bodyhtml for the email content, and from for the sender’s address.
    • Sender Identification: The email.from variable reflects the sender’s email address, matching an existing user if applicable, and email.fromsysid provides the user’s Sys ID in the system.
    • Additional Metadata: Variables like subject, contenttype, headers, and importance allow scripts to read email subject, MIME type, raw headers, and priority respectively.
    • Recipient Arrays: The email.recipientsarray provides an array of recipient addresses, facilitating iteration and conditional processing of emails based on recipients.
    • System Property Control: The email.fromAddress variable behavior can be controlled with the system property glide.email.inboundaction.extractfromheader, enabling extraction of sender address from headers if set to true.
    • RFC 2822 Compliance: Email addresses must comply with RFC 2822, using commas to separate multiple addresses, ensuring accurate parsing of recipient fields.
    • Sysemail Record Access: The sysemail variable allows direct access to the inbound email record's fields like uid, sysid, and contenttype, enabling advanced scripting scenarios.

    Practical Application

    ServiceNow customers can use these variables in inbound email action scripts to:

    • Extract and analyze sender and recipient email addresses for routing or automation.
    • Process email content in plain text or HTML format for creating or updating records.
    • Use email metadata like subject and importance to prioritize or categorize requests.
    • Iterate over recipient arrays to apply logic based on multiple recipients.
    • Reference the underlying sysemail record for detailed email attributes.

    This enables efficient handling of inbound emails, improving automation, ticket creation, and workflow triggering based on email content and metadata.

    An inbound email action script contains the email object to access various pieces of an inbound email through variables. You can use the global variable sys_email with inbound email actions.

    Table 1. Accessing email objects with variables
    Variable Contents
    email.to Contains a comma-separated list of email addresses in the To: and Cc: boxes.
    email.direct Contains a comma-separated list of email addresses in the To: box.
    email.copied Contains a comma-separated list of email addresses in the Cc: box.
    email.body_text Contains the body of the email as a plain text string.
    email.body_html Contains the body of the email as an HTML string.
    email.from Contains an email address that depends on the following conditions:
    • If the address listed in the email Headers field matches an existing user's Email address, this variable contains the user's email address.
    • If the address listed in the email Headers field does not match an existing user's Email address, this variable contains the address listed in the email Headers field.
    email.from_sys_id Contains the Sys ID of the user who sent the email to the instance.
    email.fromAddress

    If system property glide.email.inbound_action.extract_from_header property is set to true, origemail is computed from the headers. The default value is false if the property does not exist.
    email.origemail Contains the address of the email sender as listed in the email Headers field.
    email.subject Contains the subject of the email as a plain text string.
    email.recipients Contains a comma-separated list of recipient addresses as a plain text string, in the To: box.
    email.recipients_array Contains the recipient addresses as an array.
    email.content_type Contains the MIME content type of the email (for example,text/plain; charset="us-ascii" or text/html; charset="us-ascii").
    email.headers Contains details about the sender, route, and receiver as a plain text string in the format of the sending email client.
    email.importance Contains an indication from the sender about how important a message is. The value can be High, Low, or empty.
    Note:
    The instance follows RFC 2822 (Internet Message Format), which requires multiple email addresses in a group to be separated by commas, not semicolons. The instance can set the values of the email.to, email.direct, and email.copied variables only if emails addressed to groups follow the expected RFC format.

    Inbound email.recipient variables

    The recipients variables (email.recipients, email.recipients-array) allow processing of inbound email based on the email recipients. For example, you can create a script to process email based on the array values: 
    var rarray  = email.recipients_array ; for ( var i  = 0 ; i  < rarray.length ; i ++ ) { var recipient  = rarray [i ] ; // do something with it }

    The sys_email variable

    This variable lets you access the received sys_email record that triggered the inbound email action. It can be used to reference fields on the email record, such as uid, sys_id, content_type, and so on.