Part 5: Updating Incidents from Incoming Email with the Remedy Email Engine
This is a 5-part post. It began in part one where I started discussing how to automate service with the Remedy Email Engine.
The previous post deals with how to create an Incident with the Remedy Email Engine (in ITSM 7.x).
Updating an Incident from an incoming email is quite easy. The real trick is simply identifying which emails are updates to Incidents and which are new Incidents.
Fortunately this should normally be handled in the title of the email. If you are using any sort of normal ITIL process (or out of the box Remedy notifications) the notifications will include the Incident # in the title of the email. For example, the following process may occur:
- Customer emails help desk
- Our previously created parts create an Incident
- Standard workflow responds to the customer via email with a subject similar to “Incident ISS000000001234 was created from your email”
One important note here – your notification sent by step #3 may need some slight modification. Many organizations set up their ”Reply To” email address as something like DoNotReply@XMYCorp.com for standard notifications. In this case we actually WANT the users to reply. So, our notification for #3 above should be altered like this:
Also, the text of this email should encourage the customer to reply if they have a question/issue/further information.
That said – when they do reply – how do you know what to do?
That answer is easy. Let’s assume the following is still true (based off of the previous workflow):
- The Email Message will arrive successfully
- The Email Message will get directed to our Email Processing form
If those things are true then we just run a simple test on the email with another filter – we look for the Incident ID # in the Subject line like this:
From this point it’s a simple matter of writing workflow to strip out the Incident ID # and process the email.
**Edit on 6/8/2009 – I have received a question for more detail on how to do this – so I’m pasting it in below.
Stripping the Incident ID is handled by doing the following steps in the filter listed immediately above:
1.) Add 2 temp number fields to the form named something like IncStart and IncEnd. You should also have an Incident ID field.
2.) Set up a filter with a “Run If” like this:
‘Subject:’ LIKE “%INC[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]%”
3.) Add these 3 “Set Fields” actions:
-Set IncStart to:
STRSTRC($Subject:$, “INC”)
-Set IncEnd to:
$IncStart$ + 14
-Set Incident ID to:
SUBSTRC($Subject:$, $IncStart$, $IncEnd$)
*End edit
Specifically all we do – once the Incident ID is stripped out – is a simple Push Fields action to HPD:Help Desk.
If you want more information on that feel free to contact me.
Request more details on how to strip the Incident ID.
If I have to restrict the users within the distribution list alone to send emails, Do I need to hard code the incoming email addressee in the filter? Suggest me if any alternate method to validate if the incoming users are in a specified DL list.
Thank you.
Stripping the Incident ID is handled by doing the following:
1.) Add 2 temp number fields to the form named something like IncStart and IncEnd. You should also have an Incident ID field.
2.) Set up a filter with a “Run If” like this:
‘Subject:’ LIKE “%INC[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]%”
3.) Add these 4 “Set Fields” actions:
-Set IncStart to:
STRSTRC($Subject:$, “INC”)
-Set IncEnd to:
$IncStart$ + 14
-Set Incident ID to:
SUBSTRC($Subject:$, $IncStart$, $IncEnd$)
When I try to strip the Incident ID it dumps ’12′ in IncStart and ’26′ in IncEnd. It never enters anything into the IncidentID field. Am I missing something?
It sounds like the first two actions in the AL are working correctly. It’s finding the start/end of the Incident ID.
What do you see in the log files for the third action (copied below)?
-Set Incident ID to:
SUBSTRC($Subject:$, $IncStart$, $IncEnd$)
Actually, looking at it today I am seeing a message with IncStart of 27 and IncEnd with 14. I pretty much copied this verbatim and everything else worked fine.
I am guessing the command needs to be reversed – it sounds like the start is in the end and vice versa (not sure why).
Reverse it and post the results please.
What it seems like now is that it is not reading IncStart and just returning 14 for IncEnd. Should I set these as 4 seperate set field actions?
Nevermind. I answered my own question. It is working now. Thanks for your help!
Yes, I would try that. You might try doing them as seperate active links with sequential exectution order.
If that fails – export the form and workflow and send it to me (if you’d like) – I’ll take a look at it. William.rentfrow at gmail.com