Using EMail (Outlook) to create cases

[ddrake]

Hi there,
We're using ARS 5.1 and the Remedy HelpDesk application. (SQL 2000 platform).

We just made the upgrade to 5.1 and I want to leverage the new EMail engine. Does anyone have any tips/documentation/geewhiz stuff that can help me get this ball rolling?

Basically, I want user's to be able to submit an EMail from Outlook that will hit the Remedy box and automatically parse out a case. The only fields they will populate would be Problem Description, Urgency, and Username (I'll pop the rest with workflow)

Thanks for listenin'

 

[SheRa]

The only way ARS handles incoming emails (to my knowledge, and yes, I've looked into this), is through its "Email Templates". As an administrator, you can export these templates and give them to your users.

There's a few notes on these though:

1) They're ugly, and not very user-friendly. They show a lot of information about the form and its format that your users may not want to see.

2) You have no control over the format of the email, they have to be EXACTLY as ARS expects them to be.

3) If you want the Submitter field filled out with the id of the person who sent the email, they're going to have to fill out the 'password' and 'userid' fields on the template, which isn't so nice. You can obviously set up defaults if the submitter doesn't matter to you.

4) There's some kind of limit on the number of characters in a line on the email, so your users have to watch that. If the line runs over, it'll be rejected by ARS.

So the basic problem is that ARS wants its emails formatted a certain way, and that way isn't too pretty. Maybe you can build something between Outlook and ARS that'll transform the original into the ARS template format, and if you do, let me know! I'd love to have a look at it.

In the meantime, look at the Email Templates in ARS, and see if they'll work for you. They're pretty easy to set up and use if they suit you.

SheRa M&M's are better than money because you can eat them.

 

[johnkenny]

Hello ddrake:

I've implemented this capability with RSM. The users email the helpdesk just as they would anyone else. I have a filter that fires on submit in the AR System Email Message form that first looks for any attachments to the incoming email and if so graps the Attachment ID. The second filter creates the Help Desk Case entry filtering out emails coming from the Help Desk email address, postmaster, RE:, FW:, Undeliverables and Out of Office replies. The filter copies the Subject to the Summary field, the plain text to the Description field, the From field to the ztmpReqNotAddr field and the Attachment ID to an Attachment ID field I created on the Help Desk Case form. I then have a filter that fires on the Help Desk Case form where Source is Email and ztmpReqNotAddr is not NULL. I use the Requester's email address to do a lookup in the People form to retrieve the Requester's info. Then I have a filter that sends an email back to the Requester with the Help Desk Case number. I also created an Attachment Pool field on the Help Desk Case form. I have a filter that fires on Submit when the Attachment ID field is not NULL that queries the AR System Email Attachment form to pull in the attachment and attach it to the Help Desk Case form.

I then created an Email Management console that queries the Email Message form for RE: and FW: incoming emails that didn't create Help Desk Case entries. If the email is referencing an existing entry there's functionality that opens the referenced Case so the additional info can be cut'n'pasted to the Case. If it is not referencing an existing Case there's functionality to create an new Case or Change Request then mark the entry in the Email Message form as "Read".

I've also created an interface that allows the support people to send an email from an existing ticket referencing info on the ticket and then populate the send email into the work log for auditing purposes.

So as you can see there is great potential with the new Email engine, however be aware there is currently alot of bugs when using MAPI and Exchange Server. I'm currently beta testing AREmail 5.1.2 that looks promising. As Note pre-5.1.2 email templates aren't working with MAPI. All the info gets created in the AR Email app but it does not execute the creation of an entry in the target form.

ciao

john