Automatic record update

In the Smart Email solution, users can use the action buttons in an email to reply to the system. Then, Service Manager automatically updates the record based on the selected action and the email message.

Action in Smart Email Description
  • Add a Comment
  • Mark as Solved

If an IT agent performs a "visible to customer" activity update, Service Manager automatically sends out an email that contains the Add a Comment and Mark as Solved buttons in addition to the update message.

When the user receives the email, the user can click Add a Comment, add comments in the email body, and then reply the email. Then, Service Manager automatically updates the corresponding record with the comments in the email.

Note If the email content is empty without any comments, Service Manager does not update the record.

Or, the user can click Mark as Solved and reply the email to inform the IT agent that the issue has been resolved. In this case, Service Manager automatically changes the status of record to "Resolved" and populates the solution field with the email content.

Note If the email content is empty, Service Manager populates the Solution field with a default value “Mark as solved by end user”.

  • Accept
  • Reject

If an IT agent provides a solution in the record, Service Manager automatically sends out an email that contains the Accept and Reject buttons in addition to the solution message.

The user can click the Accept or Reject button to reply the email. Then, the system automatically updates the record as follows:

  • If the user accepts the solution, Service Manager changes the status of the record to "Closed".
  • If the user rejects the solution, Service Manager changes the status of the record to "Work In Progress".
  • Approve
  • Deny

If a service catalog request is pending approval, Service Manager automatically sends out an email that contains the Approve and Deny buttons to the approver.

The approver (or approval delegate) can click the Approve or Deny button to reply the email. Then, the system automatically updates the record as follows:

  • If the approver approves the approval request, Service Manager changes the approval status of the record to "approved" and copies the email content to the approval log. If the email content is empty, a fixed string "Approved by email – [email subject line]" is added to the approval log.
  • If the approver denies the approval request, Service Manager changes the status of the record to "denied" and copies the email content to the comments of approval log. If email content is empty, a fixed string “Denied by email – [email subject line]” is added to the approval log.

In addition, when the system automatically updates the record, it also completes the following tasks:

  • In the activity log, the system adds an update with a specific activity type such as "Accepted from Email" or "Rejected from Email". The activity description is copied from the subject of the inbound email.

    Note If the Add a Comment button is clicked and the email content is not empty, the activity description will be the email content.

  • The entire email is saved as a .eml file under the Attachments tab from the record.
  • If the record is associated with other records, the system also updates the status of the related records accordingly.

Reply email address

After the user clicks an action button, the reply email address is automatically populated. Likely the reply email address is different from the email account that the administrator set in the Smart Email SMIS instance, because the reply email address is calculated for each email receiver (end user) as follows:

  1. The system looks for the location of the contact that is associated with the email receiver and uses the Service Desk Email field of location as the reply email address.

    Note Locations are hierarchical. Always loop starting from the least location and check for an entry in that field. Go back to the top of the hierarchy and stop the loop as soon a location has the Service Desk Email field populated.

  2. If the Service Desk Email field is always empty in locations, the system looks for the company of the contact and uses the Service Desk Email field in company record of the contact as the reply email address.
  3. If Service Desk Email is also empty in company, the system uses the “Service Desk Email” documented in Service Desk Environment.

Related topics
Smart Email actions in HTML templates

Related topics
Set up inbound email
Configure Smart Email settings