Email Functionalities in ConSol CM

This section contains a short introduction on emailing with ConSol CM. Sending and receiving emails is a core functionality of the application.

Sending Emails from ConSol CM

Manual Emails

Emails can be sent manually by an engineer or automatically by the system. Manual emails are sent using the Ticket Email Editor. In most systems, by default, the ticket's main customer is the receiver of the email, but the engineer can select or type any other email address. The system-wide default value can be changed by an administrator using Page Customization, using the attribute mailToSelection in the Page Customization section. Furthermore, the engineer can use email templates and/or quote ticket text. Please see the ConSol CM User Manual for a detailed introduction about working with the Ticket Email Editor.

Figure 382: ConSol CM Web Client - Ticket Email Editor

Automatic Emails

Automatic emails may be sent by ConSol CM in situations like the following:

• Initiated by the workflow engine, e.g.,
  
  • when the engineer to whom the ticket is assigned should be reminded to attend to the ticket.
  • when customers should receive an automatic confirmation that a ticket has been opened for them.
  • when customers should receive an automatic confirmation that a ticket of theirs has been closed.
  • when a supervisor or approver should receive a message that a new case has to be approved.
  In any workflow activity, an email can be sent to any valid email address. Please see the ConSol CM Process Designer Manual for a detailed explanation of the methods to use.
• Initiated by the system in case of an error or for a success message, e.g.,
  
  • system error
  • email error
  • DWH synchronization (error or success)
    Usually, those emails are sent to the ConSol CM administrator. However, for most special error cases a special receiver email address can be configured using system properties. Please see section System Properties for details.
• Initiated by the ConSol CM system to remind engineers
  • When an engineer receives a ticket or a ticket is retrieved from the engineer, an email can be sent to this engineer. This can be configured on a per-queue basis, as described in section Queues.

Receiving Emails with ConSol CM

The ConSol CM system can fetch emails from one or more mailboxes (= email accounts) on one or more mail servers. The mailboxes are configured in the Admin Tool (Email Functionalities in ConSol CM). Please keep in mind that ConSol CM works with mailboxes here. Each of the mailboxes can be reached by at least one email address. In certain cases, one mailbox might be used for more than one email address. This can be significant when writing Scripts of Type Email.

As far as the mail server is concerned, ConSol CM is just a regular email client fetching emails using a standard mail protocol: IMAP(S) or POP3(S). Depending on the mail server configuration and on the ConSol CM system property cmas-nimh, mailbox.default.task.delete.read.messages, the emails are deleted from the mailbox on the mail server after ConSol CM has picked them up. The default setting is mails are not deleted after pick-up.

If you do not want ConSol CM to delete emails from the mail server, please make sure to monitor the mailbox(es) to avoid a data overflow and server or performance problems.

All incoming emails are first stored in an incoming email pool in ConSol CM and are then processed in a chain of email scripts. Please see section Scripts of Type Email for a detailed explanation of those scripts. When an email cannot be processed, the administrator will receive a notification email. The unprocessed email is listed under Email Backups.

There are different possibilities concerning the default system behavior for an incoming email:

• The subject of the email does not contain any ticket number with a valid syntax (i.e., it does not contain the pattern which is defined as regular expression (RegEx) for the ticket subject):
  A new ticket is created.
• The subject of the email does contain a ticket number with a valid syntax (RegEx) and the ticket is still open:
  The email is attached to the existing ticket.
• The subject of the email does contain a ticket number with a valid syntax (RegEx), but the ticket is closed:
  A new ticket is created and a reference to the old ticket is established.

By modifying the email scripts (see section Scripts of Type Email), the default system behavior can be changed. However, this can corrupt core functionalities of the system and should not be done or only done by very experienced ConSol consultants!

Email Duplication in the ConSol CM Web Client

Please see explanations on the Page Customization page at showCloneOption and appendOrReplaceOnClone.