Email Inbound Business Rules

Business Rules for Inbound Emails

The Email Business Rules window helps your organization automate standard operations and customize workflow related to incoming emails.

Accessing and Using Business Rules

To access Business Rules:

1.       Open the Setup/Administration tab.

2.       Select the Design Tab.

3.       Select from either Requests or Inbound Email Business Rules from the listing.

4.       The Email Business Rules designer appears as shown below.

Business Rules – Inbound Email

Toolbar Overview

The Email Business Rules window includes an Options tab as shown below.

The Options toolbar contains four task groups:

1.       Update

2.       Display

3.       Rules – create, copy and paste the rule

4.       Folder

1.       Update Task Group

•       Save – Save changes that have been made.

•       Cancel

2.       Display Task Group

Filter what type of rules you want to display:

•       Running Rules – Rules that are currently active.

•       Paused Rules – Rules that are currently not running.

3.       Rules Task Group

•       New – Create a new business rule.

•       Pause – Pause the rule selected in the ServicePRO Rules tree view.

•       Rename – Change the name of the rule selected in the ServicePRO Rules tree view.

•       Delete – Permanently delete the rule selected the ServicePRO Rules tree view.

•       Copy – Copy the rule selected

•       Paste – Paste copied rule in the selected location

4.       Folders Task Group

•       New – Add a new folder to help organize business rules.

Creating an Email Business Rule

Let’s create a business rule for the following scenario:

Oceanhouse, Inc. would like ServicePRO to monitor incoming emails from users requesting a change.

When an email comes in with the subject “change request,” Oceanhouse would like a request to be created with a change analysis type. Also, when this request has been logged, the user should receive an email requesting they log in to the Web portal to fill in additional required fields.

General Tab

To create a business rule for this situation, complete the following process:

1.       From the Options tab, click on the New icon in the Rules task group. A Design work area with four new tabs appear, as shown below:

2.       Enter a relevant name in the Rule Name field.

3.       Briefly describe the rule’s purpose in the Description field.

4.       By default, a rule will automatically start running as soon as it is created. If you prefer that the rule not run upon creation, uncheck the Start Rule Upon Saving checkbox before you save the rule.

5.       Use the checkboxes under the Monitor Selected Email Accounts work area to specify the email accounts that you want to monitor. You can select any System Email Account.

6.       The radio buttons in the Process Email From work area allow you to select what kind of email the business rule will handle:

a.       Email from All Users.

b.       Email from users whose email address is in ServicePRO (the default).

c.       Email from users whose email address is not in ServicePRO.

If you select option A or C, a frame appears below the radio buttons, as shown in the following graphic. ServicePRO needs to know how unknown (new) users should be handled.

For handling email from users who are not in the ServicePRO database, you can either select an existing user as the requester (the default), or you can create new requesters based on their email addresses.

•        If you click on the Existing Requester radio button, a drop-down list appears to help you select an existing user or add a new user who will become the requester. When the rule runs, for each email message received from an unknown user, the rule designer creates a service request from the requester you have selected. Note that Email must be enabled in this user’s properties.

•       If you click on the Create New User From Email Address radio button (as shown in the figure below), for each email message from an unknown user, the rule designer uses the display name to add that user to the ServicePRO database, and creates a new service request from that user. If there is no display name, the rule designer uses the email address to create the new user name.

1.       In the Settings work area, click on the Enabled radio button if you want to allow the new user to log in to ServicePRO (Windows and Web Portal – the default password will be “helpstar”).

2.       Click on the appropriate User Type radio button to define whether the new user is Internal or External and select the desired Organizational Unit or Company.

3.       Check the Send updates via email box if you want ServicePRO to automatically send email updates to the user when their requests are updated.

For our scenario, we want to set the (a) or (c) options because users requesting a change may not necessarily be in the ServicePRO database:

Conditions Tab

This tab helps you specify the requirements that an email must meet for a business rule to run on it.

Under Which condition(s) do you want to check? click on one of the following:

•       with specific words in sender’s email address

•       with specific words in subject

•       with specific words in body

•       with specific words in subject or body

For our scenario, we will use specific words in the subject of the email.

1.       In the Description work area, click on the underlined value to edit that value. (The underlined value is a hyperlink that will pop up a Search List window like the one shown below.)

2.       In the Add New field, add words or phrases that you expect to appear in the email’s subject line.

3.       Click on the Add button after adding each word/phrase to build the list of words and phrases shown in the Search List work area.

For our scenario, we will add “Change Request”.

4.       Click on the OK button when you have completed adding words.

Workflow Tab

The Workflow tab helps you define the best workflow, including routing, for a selected request.

When an email meets all of the conditions that were set on the Conditions tab, a request is created and automatically inherits the characteristics you set in this tab.

For our scenario, we use the Workflow tab to select the “Change Management” request type, forward it to the Customer Service queue and define the Priority of these requests as “High”

Notifications Tab

The Notifications tab helps you set up notifications you want to send when this business rule runs. You can have multiple notifications for one business rule.

There are four types of notifications:

•       Alert – Send an alert to notify appropriate personnel for the request affected when this business rule runs.

•       Email – Send an email to a user for the request affected when this business rule runs. This section has two tabs:

       New – Create a new email template

       Existing – Select a pre-existing email template

•       Text Messaging – Send text message to email address configured in User Options

•       Reminder – Schedule an automatic reminder for yourself, or other Support Reps.

For our scenario, we will use email notification. In the Email tab, click on the New link in the Caption column.

Email Tab

Email Template – New Tab

Using this tab, you can configure a new email notification.

•       Name – Enter a relevant Email Template Name.

•       From – Select the System Email Account this notification should come from.

•       To – Click on the To button and select the recipient for the email notification. You can also select from a list of pre-selected options in the Variables For work area. This feature helps you select a group of people who will receive notifications without having to individually select each person. For example, you can send the email to “All Dispatchers.”

•       CC – Click on the CC button to select recipients who should receive a “carbon copy” of the notification. Again, you can also select from a list of pre-selected options in the Variables For work area.

•       Subject – Enter a subject for the email notification. You can also enter variables in your Subject field using the Subject/Body section in the Variables For work area. For example, if you want the request number to show in the subject, you would select the “Reference number” variable. This option is unavailable if ‘Allow Reply to Update Request’ is enabled.

•       Trace Memo – Log a memo in the request when notification is sent.

•       Allow Reply to Update Request – Select this option if you would like the requester or support rep of this request to be able to update the request by replying to this email

•       Format – Select whether you would like the email to be sent in plain or rich text format

•       Body – Enter the email body for this notification. Variables can also be selected in the body that will be automatically populated to referencing a specific request.

•       Variables For – This work area helps you add variables for the following fields:        To/CC – Select a variable for additional (carbon copy) notification recipients.        Subject/Body – Add a variable (such as Reference number, Requester name, and more’) in the Subject or Body fields.

•       Re-notification/Interval – In this work area you define how often a notification can be sent to the user. Possible intervals include: 

• No re-notification – Click on this radio button when only one notification is required for the user.

• Every time the rules run – Click on this radio button to send a notification upon each scheduled run of the business rule. 
• Every – Click on this radio button to specify the exact interval after the first notification in which the notification should be re-sent by entering values in the adjacent hrs and Min after… fields.

When you have completed entering in the new email template information, click on the OK button. This email template will be added to the Email Notification list.

For our scenario, the Email Template window will be set as follows:

When you have completed entering in the new email template information, click on the OK button. This Email Template will be added to the Email Notification list.

Email Template – Existing Tab

From the Email tab of Notifications, click on New. The window above opens. Select the Existing tab, which has email templates that already exist. Click on the related button to perform these tasks:

•       Edit – Modify the highlighted template.

•       Copy – Create a copy of an existing template. A new template will be created to which you can make changes.

•       Delete – Delete the selected template.

•       When you have completed entering the information for the first email notification, click on the OK button. You can add notifications as needed.

To configure another email notification, click New… from the Email tab.