Enhancement: Wait for Email (in)

[Andrew Parsons]

Hi - We need the ability under "suspend" to wait for an email TO BE RECEIVED.

There seems to be a "wait for" option for every other action you could think of (including "Wait for Request Email"  which according to the wiki suspends "a Request's workflow until an email has been sent from the request) however there is nothing for Email received

 

We receive updates from several external vendors that copy in our Service Manager in comms. It would be great if once something has been referred to a vendor (eg: a printer that requires a site visit) the ticket is suspended waiting for a specific response from them. I know it can go on hold until ANY email is received, but we'd ideally like to look out for a specific key phrase from a specific sender  in the subject line. For example, they may have completed their site visit, fixed the issue and would like to notify us via email, and trigger closure of the ticket.

I have logged a ticket about this before, but the response was to use an Inbound Routing Rule (looking out for this key phrase/sender) which would log a new ticket, trigger a BPM to close the referenced ticket in the subject line, and then close itself (resulting in two tickets for every one request). This seems needlessly complicated, and would result in searches returning these "Close operation" tickets when searching for the original ref. Why can it not be done within an existing BPM?

Surely this is a simple addition and would enhance many customer's experience.

Who's with me???

[Steve Giller]

7 minutes ago, Andrew Parsons said:

Surely this is a simple addition and would enhance many customer's experience.

Unfortunately, this is a far from simple addition. I believe there is a story to investigate this, but I'm also sure that there are no plans action it in the near future.
I'll check with development and if this information is out of date they will update here.

[Andrew Parsons]

Thanks Steve - apologies if it is complicated, but it would really benefit customers

[Steve Giller]

If you're using the Auto Responder to update Requests from email, you can put the Request on hold, configure the Service to select an "Open" substatus on update, and use a Suspend -> Wait for Off Hold node to respond to the incoming email. This does not prevent another action taking the Request off hold and triggering the Workflow to move on, however. 

[Andrew Parsons]

Thanks Steve, but i'm talking about using it to check an incoming email, and if it contains a certain phrase in the subject / body, then perform a specific action (eg: close the call, reassign it, put it on hold)

As per my example above, we deal with external vendors. We are starting to work with one who will be dealing with our laptop provisioning for new starters. So throughout the lifecycle of a ticket, they may send 3-4 emails ("order received", "order shipped", "order delivered", "order has been returned" etc). We could agree a unique code for each of these circumstances, and the vendor would then add these into the subject line for each situation. Depending on which one is received, the bpm would then take a different action.

Simply waiting for (any) email in would not have the same control (what if the user chases? or an analyst adds an update etc). 

 

[Steve Giller]

13 hours ago, Andrew Parsons said:

i'm talking about using it to check an incoming email

This would be done by the Auto Responder, and applied to the Request as an update. The Workflow would then come off hold and you could react to the content of the update.

 

[Andrew Parsons]

Hi Steve, but we want the next action (after email received) to be automated, rather than someone having to take action.

Also, if the user happens to email in asking for an update, this would also trigger the next action, so ideally we could add condiitons (eg: email is from xyz@hb.com, subject contains "xyz" etc. 

[Steve Giller]

39 minutes ago, Andrew Parsons said:

but we want the next action (after email received) to be automated, rather than someone having to take action

There is no requirement for human interaction at this point, the Workflow can handle the progression.

40 minutes ago, Andrew Parsons said:

if the user happens to email in asking for an update, this would also trigger the next action, so ideally we could add condiitons

This can be done by collecting the last update via the Workflow, comparing that to the required conditions and placing the Request back on hold then returning to the Wait for Off Hold node until the next time.

[Andrew Parsons]

Thanks Steve - re: comparing the last update, how would this be done? Are you saying it can check for a piece of text in that update and take an action based on this? 

 

[Steve Giller]

Actually, I think it's only the source email (as in when raised from an email) that you can interrogate, I'll need to check.

[Andrew Parsons]

Thanks Steve, I'd come to the same conclusion, which is why I've raised this