Email Action Item

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Introduction The Email Action within a request enables the sending of emails directly from the request to any recipient that you wish to communicate with regarding that particular request. Email communication sent from a request is captured in the Timeline to help track and view all outbound emails send about that request. As of the Service Manager update build 1329 a number of improvements to the e-mail action have been provided. This includes changes to how it works with templates. As a result, the template variable {{message}} is no longer in use, but may still be included on the e-mail as an unresolved variable. While this can be manually removed before an email is sent, the associated e-mail template will need to be updated and the {{message}} variable removed.

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Mailboxes

Emails sent from a request are sent from a Shared Mailbox rather than an individual user. This ensures a single point of email communication from the Service Desk.

• From

The From field will be set automatically to the mailbox that has been set as the default mailbox for the service under which the request is logged.

If the agent sending the email from the request has rights / access to more than one mailbox, a drop down list will be available for them to manually change which mailbox the email will be sent from.

Recipients

The recipients of an e-mail can include Hornbill Users, Hornbill Contacts, or if the recipient does not exist within Hornbill, you can simply provide their e-mail address.

• To

Add one or more recipients who will receive the e-mail. The customer of the request is automatically added as a recipient as they are seen as the most common recipient, however there is no restriction on who the email is sent to.

• CC/BCC

Clicking on the CC/BCC option, these two fields will be exposed to allow additional recipients to be added as either a carbon copy or as a blind carbon copy.

• Connections

For ease of communication with people that are connected to a request, you are able to quickly include connections as recipients of your email.

Attachments

For any outgoing e-mail, a user can include attachments as part of the e-mail. By Clicking on the Paper Clip button the file upload is displayed.

• File Upload

Click on the File Upload button to browse your local file system or you can drag and drop a file into the designated area. The attached files are displayed and each individual file can be removed if it was added in error.

• Associated Files

You can include files that are already attached to the request. After selecting the paper clip button, if there are existing files already associated to the request, an option titled Show Associated files is displayed. Clicking on this link will show a list of the attachments associated to the request. You can select one or more of these attachments to include with your e-mail.

E-mail Template

When an email is composed from within a request, a template is used to pre-populate the subject and body of the e-mail. This is a great way to provide a standard format to all of the outgoing emails.

• Default Template

The default email template used can be based on the the request type, and service against which the request has been logged. The selected template name is displayed, and the email template content made available. If a template is not set against a serivce, the RequestMessage template is used.

• The email template, and any resolvable variables defined in the email template, are displayed in the html compose email window, where the content of the email can be reviewed, and edited prior to sending.

• Variables

By default, the RequestMessage template includes the variable message. This was previously required, as the user would type into the email action text box and this message would be injected into the email template when it was sent. You can now remove this variable as it is no longer needed, users will manually type and see the text they wish to send now the email template content is previewed before sending in the request email action.

• Selecting a Template

Should you wish to make the email template selectable to your agents when they are sending emails from within a request, you can do so via the admin console. This option will expose a drop down list of the defined email templates which the agent can then choose to use.

You can enable the following system setting Service Manager > Settings which is off by default.

• app.email.request.operation.templateSelectable
• This is a global setting and will apply to all requests types and all services, and will return a list of all email templates

Snippets

Snippets provide the ability to predefine common responses which you want to include in outgoing email content. The use of Snippets ensures that the same response does not need to be typed manually each time, and to ensure a consistent level of response is given by all analysts who use the snippets rather than manually entering responses each time.

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Visibility

Use the drop down option to set the visibility level for the email action in the timeline of the request. If the email was not for the customer of the request, and you did not wish for the customer to see the email action via their self service view, you can set the visibility level to Team

Timeline

When an email has been sent, a record of the email is posted to the request timeline. To view the content of the sent email, select View Email from the more menu option on the timeline post.