Demystifying Inbound Email Action Processing

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Inbound action is all about how servicenow responds when an email is received by the system. Based on the logic inbuilt in the system, email received is categorized as new/forward/reply, and then continues the processing.

 

What triggers inbound and what’s the frequency

In every two minutes servicenow runs a schedule job named Email Reader. It connects to the mail server using the account specified in Email Properties. The Email Reader downloads any incoming message that is waiting on the mail server and creates email.read events. After the instance processes the events, the inbound actions run. Based on the logic inbuilt, it identifies whether email received is new/forward/reply.


              

Identification of the Sender of the email

Servicenow identifies the user who sent the email based on the email id of the sender. As soon as servicenow receives the email, it matches the sender’s email id with all the user’s email id in the user table. if there is any match found then sender is identified with that matched user id. In case if there is no match found then system considers the sender of the email as a guest user (Provided “Automatically create users for incoming emails from trusted domain” property of email is unchecked else it will create a new user and will refer to that user as a sender of the email).

Processing of inbound email

Once email is received by the platform, first it is checked if email is worth processing based on the below conditions:

1.      Does subject line start with text like “out of office autoreply”?

2.      Does sender’s email id match email id of any existing user in user table and user is logged out?

If any of the above two condition evaluates to true, then Mailbox value of the email is set to Skipped and processing of the inbound will stop. If both above condition evaluates to false, then processing of inbound will move further and now it will try to categorize it as one of new/forward/reply. Below is the Sequence of categorization:

1.      Forwarded email – First inbound email is tried to categorize as forwarded email. If it fails it will move to the other categorization

2.      Reply email – If inbound fails to categorize email as forward, it tries to categorize it as reply.

3.      New email – If inbound email fails to categorize as forwarded or reply then it is considered as a new email.

This sequence is fixed and cannot be changed. Let’s discuss each categorization one by one.

 

Logic to identify email as Forward:

If the subject line of the email is prefixed with recognized/defined forward prefix and string From appear anywhere in the body of the email. In platform, forward prefix is defined in “Identify email as a reply by these subject prefixes” property of the email properties as shown in the below screenshot:



 

Logic to identify email as Reply:

If any of the below condition evaluates to true, then email is marked as reply:

1.      Does email subject prefixed with Re and contains and contains system recognized record number like INC0010061?

2.      Does email body contains a valid watermark like Ref:MSG0140490_lRhI4zra325ws7oc8NwO

3.      Does email body contains In-Reply-To header, having value same as Message Id field of any other email table record as shown in below screen shot? (We will discuss this in detail and will deep dive using Use-Case in a separate blog)





Logic to identify email as New:

When system fails to categorize received email as forward or reply, it is identified as New

 

Flow of determining the type of incoming email



Image source : Servicenow Doc (https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/orlando-servicenow-platform/page/administer/notification/concept/c_InboundEmailActions.html)

 

Below are the email properties where prefix identifier for reply and forward are defined


 


 

 

 

 

 

 

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