Inbound Routing Rules

Home > Administration > System > Email > Email Routing Rules

Introduction The Email Routing Rules provide a way of automating the delivery and actions that occur on emails that are received into Hornbill. This may be simply redirecting the email message to a particular shared mailbox or applying advance operations that are provided by the different Hornbill Apps. Each Email Routing rules allow you to define expressions to verify the content of the incoming emails in order for that rule to apply.

Related Articles Service Manager Routing Rule Templates

Routing Rules List

Email Routing Rule Form

From the list of Routing Rules there a few actions and some considerations to keep in mind.

• Switching On or Off

At the top of the list a toggle button is provided to turn the Routing Rules to being either On or Off. This setting applies to all rules in this list. For the rules to be processed, this must be set to On.

• Creating a Rule

Clicking on the + in the tool bar will allow you to create a new rule.

• Ordering

Once more than one rule has been created, the order of the rules can be changed by using the up and down arrows located on the right side of each rule. When an email is received, the routing rules will be processed in the order that they are listed, starting at rule 1. If a rule doesn't match it will then check the next rule. If no rules match the email will simply reside in the Inbox.

• Deleting a Rule

The Delete option in the tool bar becomes available once one or more Rules are selected in the list

Rule Expression

Each Routing Rule requires a Rule Expression which is used to validate information held within the email. To help with setting up the Rule Expression a number of parameters have been provided in the Rule Parameters selector located at the top right of the Rule Expression field. Selecting any of these items from the list will insert that Rule Parameter into the Rule Expression field.

• toAddress
• toDomain
• fromAddress
• fromDomain
• subject
• body
• mailbox

If you are manually adding Rule Parameters it is important that the correct letter case is used and it matches those provided in the Rule Parameters selector

Rule Expression Syntax

The syntax used in the Rule Expression is similar to standard SQL syntax. String and numeric comparisons, and parentheses are all supported.

A few basic expressions to get you started can be found by showing the list of functions.

Function	Example
LIKE	subject LIKE '%abc' or subject LIKE 'xyz%' or subject LIKE '%mno%'
NOT	subject != 'abc'
NOT IN	subject NOT IN ('abc', 'zyx')
IN	subject IN ('abc', 'mno', 'xyx')
=	subject = 'abcd'

Special Functions

Hornbill supports a number of functions that are useful for more complex expressions.

Function Name	Description
LEFT	Return the leftmost number of characters specified. For example: LEFT(“The Dog”, 3) = “The”
MID	Same as SUBSTRING()
SUBSTRING	Return a substring starting from the specified position. SUBSTRING(string, pos) SUBSTRING (string, pos, length) For example: SUBSTRING(“The Dog”, 5) = “Dog” SUBSTRING(“The Dog”, 5, 2) = “Do”
RIGHT	Returns the rightmost ‘length’ characters from the ‘string’ RIGHT(string, length) For example: - RIGHT(“The Dog”, 2) = “og”
TOKEN	Assumes that whitespace is a token separator, this function will return the token specified. The line and token values are zero based, so to obtain the first word in the first line, line=0 and token=0 TOKEN(string, line, token)
CONCAT	Takes any number of arguments and concatenates them all together returning a string. For example: - CONCAT(‘The’, ‘ ‘, “Dog”) = “The Dog”
REGEX_MATCH	Returns a true/false depending on the outcome of the regular expression match against the supplied string. REGEX_MATCH(“String to match”, “regex to test”) This function is based on perl compatible regular expressions. Please see the following URL: - http://www.pcre.org/ Example of a routing rule matching a request reference in the email subject: REGEX_MATCH(subject, '.*\b[a-zA-Z]{2}[0-9]{8}\b.*')
REGEX_SUBSTR	Returns a substring of the provided ‘string’ based on the provided regular expression. REGEX_SUBSTR(string, regex) This function is based on perl compatible regular expressions. Please see the following URL: - http://www.pcre.org/
STRING_REPLACE	Replaces all occurrences of needle in haystack and returns the resultant string: STRING_REPLACE(needle, haystack, string)

Use Mailbox

This option provides the simple routing of incoming emails to a particular Shared Mailbox.

• Mailbox

From the list of available Shared Mailboxes, select the mailbox that you wish emails that match the Rule Expression to be routed to.

• Folder

Select the folder within the selected Shared Mailbox for email to be stored in. This list of folders include the Inbox, Deleted Items, and any custom folder that has been added to the selected Shared Mailbox.

Use Operation

Each Hornbill App can provide Operations that provide advanced processing of emails.

• Application

Select an App to view the available operations for that particular App

• Operation

Select the operation that you wish to perform if your Rule Expression matches

• Target Folder Success

On a successful Rule Expression match the folder you would like the email routed to

• Target Folder Failure

In the case of a rule match but action failure the folder you would like the email routed to

• Reference

This field can be used by the selected operation in order to correctly process the selected Operation. Refer to the application specific documentation to determine if this is required.

Service Manager Settings

When setting up Operations in the context of Service Manager you will need to set up default values for calls to be logged against.

1. Open Hornbill Administration
2. Select Service Manager from the Application selector in the top left
3. Under the left hand menu option 'Application' and select 'Settings'

Available Settings

• app.email.routing.rules.allow.closed.call.updates.IN - Switch on to enable closed Incidents to be updated via a routing rule
• app.email.routing.rules.allow.closed.call.updates.SR - Switch on to enable closed Service Requests to be updated via a routing rule
• app.email.routing.rules.default.priority.IN - Set a default Priority for Incidents on logging
• app.email.routing.rules.default.priority.SR - Set a default Priority for Service Requests on logging
• app.email.routing.rules.default.service.IN - Set a default Service for Incidents on logging
• app.email.routing.rules.default.service.SR - Set a default Service for Service Requests on logging
• app.email.routing.rules.default.team.IN - Set a default team for allocating Incidents on logging
• app.email.routing.rules.default.team.SR - Set a default team for allocating Service Requests on logging
• app.email.routing.rules.unknownUsers.sendConfirmation - Send an email to users who are not recognized by their email address
• app.email.routing.rules.unrecognised.email.template - The template used when sending emails to users who are not recognized by their email address

What Actions Can be Performed based on a Matching Rule?

Within Hornbill you can automate the following actions

• Routing of an email to a specified Mailbox and folder within that mailbox

• Log a new Incident
• Update an existing Incident
• Log a new Service Request
• Update an existing Service Request

Note: For logOrUpdateIncident, logOrUpdateServiceRequest and updateRequest operations the Reference field is a mandatory parameter. You will need to specify the Regex Syntax that matches your call reference. E.g. for the standard out-of-the-box reference use: [a-zA-Z]{2}[0-9]{8}