Incident Creation from an Incoming Email

For Service Management customers running Microsoft Exchange, specific mailboxes can be monitored so that incidents are automatically created based on the content of received email. Upon creation of the incident, the original email is archived, the attachments saved to the file system, and a notification of the event can be sent.

Exchange Integration Service

The Exchange Integration Service is designed to monitor multiple mailboxes and public folders. Use the Exchange Integration Parameter form to designate each folder to be monitored.

When a monitored folder receives an email, an incident is created. The incident information is populated as follows:

  • A query for the sender's email address is processed in an attempt to associate the incident to an existing customer. The Customer Number and Ship To fields are left blank on the incident if no related contact is found, or if more than one contact related to the email address is found.
  • The priority and status codes will default, obeying the same business rules as they would in manual creation.
  • A note record for the incident is created and contains a listing of the email recipient addresses, a listing of the names of the files attached, and the text version of the email body.

After the incident is created, the email is marked as read and moved to the specified archive folder. The subject line of the original email is altered to include the incident number that was created in the system to track the request.

A notification email can be sent to alert someone that a new incident has been created. The notification email contains the incident number, description, and notes related to the incident.

Attachments received from the email are copied to the file system. The attachment file name is altered to include the incident number and current date stamp.

Supporting Enhancements

A Windows Service has been created that must be installed and configured for Service Managementt to communicate with Exchange. The service utilizes existing Service Management configurations to gain access to the correct application database with the proper credentials. The Exchange Service writes to a log file that can track different levels of connection detail. The Service has been written to automatically delete old log files to assist with file system clean up.

Note:  The user associated to the Exchange Service must possess read/write access to the Attachments folder if attachments are to be stored. The user of the service also needs access to the mailboxes and public folders to be monitored.