Requirements
- many-to-one assignment (one assignment group can have many email addresses)
- should not have to edit code to add/update/delete queue mail aliases
- should ignore Cc: address list
Proposal
- create a related table under Assignment Groups for Mail Aliases
- modify the Create Incident inbound action script to use the new table to match To: address to Assignment Group
Steps
- create/populate table 'u_group_mail_aliases':
- u_email (string)
- u_group (reference to sys_user_group)
- update the Create Incident inbound action with something like this:
// bw -- expose headers and text in description (just for PoC) // current.description = email.headers + email.body_text; // bw -- find assigment group by doing a lookup in u_group_mail_aliases // loop through email.direct var addresses = email.direct.split(","); for (var i=0; i < addresses.length; i++) { var alias = new GlideRecord('u_group_mail_aliases'); alias.addQuery('u_email', '=', addresses[i]); alias.query(); if (alias.getRowCount() > 0) { break; } } // if there was an alias match, use it to assign group if (alias.getRowCount() > 0) { // first match wins! alias.next(); current.assignment_group = alias.u_group; }
...the table can be permissioned as appropriate (probably fine to restrict it to admin). Might be nice to restrict the u_email field to be unique, but that's just icing since it's enforceable manually by any reasonable admin.
Configuring aliases in the running system
The mail alias binding to groups happens at the Group level in Adminstration controls. Click a group, and then bottom of the dialogue page contains a tab called "Group Email Alias".
To configure a new alias for the first time, somebody needs to open a Service Request to YSS Client Accounts and make a request to bounce the mail to servicenow@bulldogs.yale.edu
When YSS completes their work, and the alias is configured for the appropriate SN group, the email intake will auto-assign to the appropriate group.
Opinions on Service Now and inbound mail
Service Now isn't all that fantastic at handling mail, and incidents created from inbound mail are missing many properties that must be fixed before the recipient can handle the created incident. We also have spammable mail aliases, which then create bogus incident tickets we have to clean up. Eventually it would be nice to turn off inbound mail, or restrict it to a limited set of senders.