Sending email messages in Smart IT

When working on tickets, as a service desk agent, you might need to send information to customers and other IT users or ask questions to resolve tickets. The email feature in Smart IT enables you to send emails directly from tickets instead of using your standard email system. This feature helps you in several ways:

• Emails that are sent directly from tickets are context sensitive. Ticket ID and title are automatically added to the email, and people related with the ticket such as customers and contacts can be added without knowing their email addresses.
• Files and knowledge articles can be sent as attachments, especially to customers for their future reference.
• Email messages are sent and received on a generic system account, which keeps your corporate email address secure.
• Email information is stored on the ticket in the Activity feed. Thus, an audit trail is maintained.
• Email recipients can reply to the system-sent email.

You can send emails from Universal client (UC), Google Android (Android) and Apple iOS (iOS).

You can send emails directly from the following tickets—Incident, Work Order, Task, Problem Investigations, Known Error, and Change Request. If you have access to these tickets, you do not need additional permission to send emails or update the work notes.

Before you begin

• Before you compose emails, you must have Smart IT user permissions and access to tickets
• The system administrator must perform the following configurations:
  • BMC Remedy Email Engine on BMC Remedy Action Request System (BMC Remedy AR System). For more information, see Configuring BMC Remedy Email Engine.
  • The mailbox for incoming and outgoing emails
  • To send a knowledge article, you need Read/Write permissions to the folder that maintains the temporary PDF files generated during PDF conversion at the Smart IT server. The default path is Java temp location. You must either provide permission to the folder, or configure the location by using the parameter  <filePathToSaveTempKnowledgeArticleFile>. 
  • In BMC Remedy AR System, on the Attachment Security tab of the Server Information form, you can configure the attachment criteria and define supported file extensions.
  • By default, files up to 10 MB can be attached to an email. In BMC Remedy ITSM, on the Email Attachment field of the NTE:Notifier form, you can configure the file size limit.

To compose emails

This section provides more information on composing emails.

To send an email from a ticket (for example, an incident ticket), open the incident, and then perform the following steps:

• (UC) Click the Share icon and then click Email this Incident. 
• (Android) Tap the Contact icon next to the customer or assignee name, and then tap Compose Email.
  Alternatively, you can also tap the Options icon , and then tap Share.
• (iOS) Tap Actions, and then tap Email this Incident.

In the To field, you can specify the name, login ID, email address, or corporate ID to search for a recipient. who has a profile in Smart IT. For people who do not have a profile in Smart IT, enter their email addresses. You cannot use accelerators—exclamation mark (!) to populate the To field with content from fields on the ticket, such as the assignee.

The ticket ID and ticket title is automatically populated in the SUBJ field. You can add or modify the subject of the email. In case of UC, the ticket ID and ticket title is also prepopulated in the Connected To placeholder area. You can enter up to 254 byte characters in the email subject.

When you type email content, you can use accelerators to include accurate ticket details in your email.

1. Type an exclamation mark (!) in the email content area or select the Help using accelerators to insert content option.
   Smart IT opens a list of accelerators, which are fields from the ticket. 
2. Select an accelerator and the system adds the value of the field to the email content.
   For example, if you select the accelerator !Description, Smart IT inserts the description of the ticket in the email content area.

Smart IT provides predefined accelerators that differ as per the ticket type. Accelerators are the key fields of the ticket type. You cannot customize accelerators.

To attach files and knowledge articles to an email

When you compose an email from the tickets, to attach files, click the Attachment icon and then select File. On an incident ticket, you can also attach a related knowledge article by using the Knowledge Article option. In an email, you can attach only one file or a pinned knowledge article.

To attach files

You can attach the following types of files to an email:

• UC—Images and files of file types supported in Remedy Mid Tier
• Android—Only camera pictures and files
• iOS—Images in the device gallery

To attach knowledge articles

The incident might or might not be resolved, but the service desk agent can send a knowledge article that will help customer to resolve the issue. The agent can send an article that is pinned to the incident.

• Knowledge articles are sent as PDFs. However, files attached to the knowledge article such as videos, animated images, and other files are not converted into PDF and are not included in the email.
• You can attach articles irrespective of the status they are in. However, they must have the Publish to External Audiences option set to Yes.
• The current copy of the pinned article is attached to the email.
• In case of multiple versions of an article, only the version that you pinned to the incident can be sent as an email attachment.
• The article could be created from any type of supported knowledge article template, including custom templates.
• A link to the knowledge article that you emailed is available in the Activity feed of the ticket and the Updates feed of those following the incident. You can click the link to view the complete article in a separate window.
• The RKM:SHR_RKM_Document_Email_Status form in Remedy ITSM shows the status of the sent email that has an article attached to it, and maintains email failure logs.
• The content of the article could be in any language that Smart IT supports, except Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Hebrew. 
• Irrespective of the language the article is written in, the article metadata and PDF name is always in English.
• Sending articles as email attachment is an asynchronous process, and hence might take some time to deliver to the recipient.

To track emails in the Activity feed and the Updates feed

The Activity feed and Updates feed help you to get details of the emails sent from a ticket. When the system successfully delivers the email, Smart IT adds a feed about the email to the Activity feed of the ticket and the Updates feed of the followers of that ticket. You can search for emails in filters available in the Activity feed and Updates feed.

A link to the knowledge article that you emailed is available in the Activity and Updates feed. You can click the link to view the complete article.

The Activity feed displays the name of the person who sent the email, the number of recipients, and attachment, if any. You can select the number of recipients to see their name. You can select the name to view the profile. If the recipient is not registered with Smart IT, when you click the recipient's name, an email window with the email address of the person pre-populated in the To field is displayed.

If the underlying BMC Remedy ITSM installation is configured to allow the creation and the updating of tickets by email (version 8.1.00 and later) and the recipient replies to the email note sent from the ticket, then Smart IT adds the reply to the ticket and to the Activity and Updates feed.

To track emails in the Email status form

When you send an email with a file or a knowledge article attached to it, you can view the email delivery in the NTE:Notifier log form and the AR System Email Messages form in Mid tier.

You can track the status of sent emails and PDF conversion of the article in the RKM:SHR_RKM_Document_Email_Status form in Remedy ITSM. To find out the status of the email, enter details of the email such as the incident ID, knowledge article ID, email subject, or the date of sending the email:

The form maintains a record of the email that the system failed to deliver. The following reasons could lead to failure in delivering emails:

• The email server or the Smart IT server is down
• The attached file is corrupt
• The file size is more than the set limits
• The file type is not supported in Smart IT or ITSM
• Invalid email addresses of the recipients
• Issues in PDF conversion

Based on the reason given in the form, you may rectify the error and resend the email.

Updating filters while updating out-of-the-box email template

If you copy and rename an out-of-the-box template, you need to update the run-if qualification for the filters for the new template name, so that the Source ID gets associated correctly for the new template. For example, if you rename ITSM_Generic_Template and it has a run-if qualification ('EmailTemplateName' = "ITSM_Generic_Template"), then you need to update the following filters:

• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetIncidentType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetProblemType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetReleaseApprovalType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetChangeApprovalType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetActivityType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetReleaseType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetKnownErrorType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetWorkOrderType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetChangeType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetRequestType
• NTE:NTS:Email_SystemNT_with_EmailTemplateSetTaskType