Receiving e-mails

Many systems can send e-mails. But isn't it annoying when they are broadcast only? When I get sent a message, I want to be able to reply to it. E-mail should be a conversation, not a fire-and-forget distribution mechanism.

So what happens when you reply to a ServiceNow e-mail? It gets categorized and then processed according to the settings in Inbound Email Actions.

Tip

Lots of information is available in the product documentation: https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/helsinki-servicenow-platform/page/administer/notification/concept/c_InboundEmailActions.html.

Determining what an inbound e-mail is

Every two minutes, the platform runs the POP Reader scheduled job. It connects to the e-mail account specified in the properties and pulls them all into the Email table, setting the Mailbox to be Inbox.

Tip

Despite the name, the POP Reader job also supports IMAP accounts.

This fires an event called email.read, which in turn starts the classification of the e-mail. It uses a series of logic...