Creating new request from an email is not pulling through the summary and details of the email, happening only for one analyst

[JanS2000]

Morning, this is a very strange one and hopefully someone can help. This is only affecting me from what I can gather, the rest of the team are okay. 

We create service requests from email and it pulls through the subject/summary and detail of the email into the call. Up until this morning, it's worked fine but it's no longer working for me. It's only happening on one particular service, which happens to be the main one we use for logging service requests. I've cleared my cache in Edge and opened a new browser but this didn't help and also tested using Chrome which I never normally use, and this is exactly the same. I'm currently a bit sleep deprived so I may be missing something really obvious, but I can't think what else to check. 

Thanks in advance for any help, advice or suggestions

[JanS2000]

Quick update, the same thing happened to a colleague for one call a couple of days ago, on the same service but it's been okay for them since.

[James Ainsworth]

Hi @JanS2000

Thanks for your post.  I've not seen this happening but I'll keep an eye open in case anyone else has reported this.  There are a few things that would probably be needed to investigate further.  The first is to understand if you are mapping any fields from a custom form in Intelligent Capture or possibly you are updating the fields from the BPM after the request has been raised, which could possibly be overwriting the summary and description. 

Are you using the default Details Form in intelligent capture when a request is being raised from an email? 

 

[JanS2000]

Morning @James Ainsworth, thanks for your reply.

We have a data capture form in intelligent capture for service requests with a drop down list of different types of request, so we can pick what type it is. They're mandatory fields so that if a user logs the request on the portal, they've got to give the info required, and so when we pick the call up from email, we normally put a basic description in for what it is and choose the relevant item from the drop down list, but when we click to finish, the details of the email still comes through to the logged call and shows the right info in the summary and description fields. The second and third fields in the image below look to be mapped to the Summary and Description. 

I'm not doing anything different to the rest of the team, and I'm doing what I've always done which worked until yesterday (at least, that's when I noticed). One of my colleagues had the same thing on one request a few days ago but it's since righted itself and is working as before. I do all the admin for our Hornbill instance and have developed some processes and services for specific workflows we carry out, could I have crossed workstreams or something maybe that's affecting this for me? 

As always, thanks for your help, it's always appreciated. 

[JanS2000]

13 minutes ago, JanS2000 said:

Morning @James Ainsworth, thanks for your reply.

We have a data capture form in intelligent capture for service requests with a drop down list of different types of request, so we can pick what type it is. They're mandatory fields so that if a user logs the request on the portal, they've got to give the info required, and so when we pick the call up from email, we normally put a basic description in for what it is and choose the relevant item from the drop down list, but when we click to finish, the details of the email still comes through to the logged call and shows the right info in the summary and description fields. The second and third fields in the image below look to be mapped to the Summary and Description. 

I'm not doing anything different to the rest of the team, and I'm doing what I've always done which worked until yesterday (at least, that's when I noticed). One of my colleagues had the same thing on one request a few days ago but it's since righted itself and is working as before. I do all the admin for our Hornbill instance and have developed some processes and services for specific workflows we carry out, could I have crossed workstreams or something maybe that's affecting this for me? 

As always, thanks for your help, it's always appreciated. 

Hello again, I've just noticed the colleague who had this issue said he copied & pasted the info from the email into the form while he was logging the call. I'm wondering if that's what the whole team do so just waiting for them to confirm. I don't do that and the info comes through, so I do wonder if it is something I've done recently. I'm sure that this specific data capture/intelligent capture isn't used anywhere else, I tend to create one for each service so I can manage them easily, but I will double check this and come back to post an update.

[JanS2000]

Okay, further update, it turns out that this may have started a while ago but nobody mentioned it to me. One colleague who joined us in May said he's always had to copy and paste the info from emails for service requests (although I've logged requests on this service myself since, and into July). The BPM we use this intelligent capture form for, has a node at the start to bring over the email info into the call when it's logged. It's definitely worked in the past but now I'm unsure as to when it actually stopped working.

[James Ainsworth]

Hi @JanS2000

Thanks for all the info and updates.

 There are a few considerations when manually raising a request from an email.  Sorry if I'm repeating things that you already know, but I thought I'd start with this.

In some cases, the Intelligent Capture for raising a request from an email needs to be different from the standard Intelligent Captures.  There is a setting that lets you set which Intelligent Capture is used when you click on the Raise Request button within the email view.  If this setting is blank, it will just use the standard new request capture.

 

In either case, if the capture includes the default Request Details form...

The summary will be populated with the email subject and the description will have the body of the email.

If this Request Details form is missing from the capture, the subject (summary) and body (details) will not be automatically added to the request once the request is raised.  Having this form available does give the support person an opportunity to clean up information in the email, such as a long conversation in an email or removing signatures, etc.  If you don't want this form to be available, then there are other ways to get this information into the Summary and Description using the BPM update automations, getting information from the source email, and then updating the request.  

 

 

[JanS2000]

Thanks @James Ainsworth, the setting is blank which I presume it has been since we started using Hornbill (I haven't changed it and nobody else does any of the admin).

The intelligent capture for our standard requests just has the data capture form, and not the request info bit you've mentioned, but it still brought the info through. Could this have been a fault or anomaly that's been "fixed" with one of the recent updates? If so, if I add the request detail node into the intelligent capture, would I put this before or after the data capture node?

 

[James Ainsworth]

Provided that you are not capturing the summary and details within custom fields using the custom Data Capture form, you could put it on either side.  Before sounds like it may work best.  Once the Details form has been added, when you run the capture you will see that the summary and description are automatically populated from the email.

[JanS2000]

Thanks @James Ainsworth, I'll give it a go

[JanS2000]

Hi @James Ainsworth, yes the data capture does use the summary and details fields so I won't be able to do this will I?

I'm so confused with this, it worked for me until a couple of weeks ago. I've added a Hornbill automation node in the BPM right at the start. I'm not sure if I've done something wrong with that maybe...

 

[James Ainsworth]

Hi @JanS2000

I'm doing some tests to make sure I understand at what points the subject and body of an email are brought over to a request and how it might be either not added or possibly overwritten.  I'm certain that you will be able to do what you need to do.  I think the problem at the moment is more about my understanding of your configuration.  

Could you confirm in this Intelligent Capture, if there is anything in this Data Capture custom form that might be asking for summary and/or description information that is being mapped to the summary and description fields of a request?

[James Ainsworth]

You may be correct that there was a slight change in behaviour recently.  In the update build 2906, there was a fix to an issue where if a custom form was being used in Intelligent Capture to update/map to the summary and description fields, these custom fields were being overwritten.  Despite it saying when raising a linked request it also applies to raising a request from an email.

 

So, once I have a better understanding of how you have your Data Capture node configured, we should be able to get this set up the way that you would like.

 

[James Ainsworth]

In your Data Capture custom form, if you have a field configured like this where you have it mapped to the h_summary, two things can happen.

 

1.  If this field is populated during the capture, this value will be used as the summary on the request

2. If a user skips this and leaves it blank, then the subject line from the email will be added to the summary of the request.

This might explain why sometimes a request shows the email information and sometimes it doesn't.  

[JanS2000]

Hi @James Ainsworth, yes both the summary and detail fields are in the data capture and are mandatory fields, so as when users fill the form in on the portal, they have to put something in, so then we have to when raising calls ourselves, either manually or from email, so these fields can't be skipped. I've noticed that whatever we put in when we pick up the ticket (we just put a brief description) - it's just showing what we put in manually.

Is the way to resolve this to change these from mandatory fields and then leave them blank when we raise from email? Thanks so much for your help and explaining what could have caused this. I thought I was losing my marbles  

[JanS2000]

Hello again @James Ainsworth, I've changed those fields to not require a value and put some descriptive text in to prompt people to complete these fields when submitting them manually or via the portal. I've tested it and this now works so hopefully this will do for now, thanks for your help again  

[James Ainsworth]

@JanS2000

It might be worth keeping an eye on this post, just in case this is partly related to what you are experiencing.

 

[JanS2000]

Thanks @James Ainsworth!