Configuring maximum attempts to process inbound emails automatically

The email rule engine determines the actions it must perform on an inbound email based on the rules you have configured for processing inbound emails. For example, if an inbound email matches the rule qualification to create an incident, the email rule engine creates an incident. 

An attempt by the email rule engine to process an inbound email for creating or updating a record, such as an incident or change request, might fail because of the following reasons:

• A technical error occurs while creating or updating the record. For example, network, database, or server error.
• A data error is detected while creating or updating the record. For example, email contains invalid values, ticket template is incorrect, or subject line of the email is incorrect.

You can configure the maximum number of attempts, which includes the auto-retry attempts, the email rule engine can perform to process an inbound email for creating or updating a record. The email rule engine performs auto-retry only on attempts that fail because of technical errors with any of the following error codes: 90, 91, 93, 94, and 8760. For more information about the error codes, see AR System error messages.

The maximum attempts include the first attempt and the retry attempts. For example, if you configure the maximum attempts as 3, then a total of 3 attempts are performed, which includes the first attempt and two retry attempts. A retry attempt is performed after every five minutes.

If all retry attempts fail, you can manually retry to process the email. You can also manually retry to process the emails that fail because of data errors. For more information, see Manually retrying failed inbound emails.