Documentation on UW Connect Email Handling


Overview

In UW Connect, it receives and sends emails to users based on replies to records. Users often respond to these replies via their email. Not only that, users can also create a new record from an email. For this to process, it's important to understand how this works at a high level. 

Process

When UW Connect receives an email, it pre-processes to determine if it is a forward, reply, or a new record. It has been configured so that it never thinks of a forward. If it's a reply, it then defines a set of prefixes in the subject line of the email and looks at (RE/forward etc). For example, if it finds it to be a reply from looking at the in reply to header, it will enable a reply action. It can also check for the watermark to determine if it's a reply and then find a record it is associated with. 

Below is an image displaying a high level workflow diagram on how emails are sent and received between the user and UW Connect

Ticket Creation From Email 

To create a new ticket, forward the email message to help@uw.edu and make sure to remove the following:

Failure to remove the watermarks may cause email contents to be added to the ticket that corresponds to the watermark and send unintended emails to the caller and customer watchlist members. 

 

Reply to Record

To update a ticket, reply the email message to the email that was received. Ensure the following are kept:

 

Including Email in a Record

Most email associated with a record is recorded in the Activity Log automatically. For example, if you enter information in the Additional Comments field, that information is sent to the caller and the email message is recorded in the activity log. Similarly, if a caller replies to such an email, the reply message is recorded in the activity log. 

Sometimes, however, it's beneficial to include other email messages in a record, such as email from a third party that would not normally be recorded in the activity log. There are several ways to include such email messages in a record:

 

Determining Email to Configuration Item/Group Automatic Assignment

When a new Request (or occasionally other task type) is generated from an email, the default Configuration Item and Assignment Group is determined by which email address the the email was received on.  This relies on configuration in the CAC email space, RT email aliases, Lima alias, and UW Connect.

  1. Email should be sent to a CAC alias which is then forwarded to an RT alias. This is to ensure that the email is spam scanned. Email from outside the UW will be rejected if sent directly to an @rt email address.
  2. When the email is received by the RT email servers it is injected to a script which inserts the email into Lima alias. The mapping of RT email alias to Lima alias is recorded in the Lima Alias Builder. When changes are made use the lima-alias git repository to generate a new RT alias file which needs to be pushed out to the RT email servers (and ref).
  3. When Lima forwards email on to UW Connect it adds a header into the email identifying the Lima alias that the email belonged to.
  4. UW Connect then uses the Lima alias email header to identify which Inbound Email Action to use.  The Inbound Email Action determines the table (Request/Incident/Task), Configuration Item, (optionally) Assignment Group, and potentially more.

 

Knowledge

What is the Request Tracker (RT)?

It is a previous record/ticket tracking system used by UW-IT. The email flows were inherited into UW Connect. Refer to wiki link here and here for further documentation. It has been retired as stated in this knowledge article.

What is Lima?

It is an email filtering application. It checks and determines the level of spam with the current max acceptable rating of 40 or above; if triggered, creates a filtered email record. UW connect bases its configurations on the Lima Alias Builder. Further documentation on Lima as stated in this knowledge article. 

What is a watermark?

By default, the system generates a watermark label at the bottom of each notification email to allow matching incoming email to existing records. Each watermark includes a random 20-character string that makes it unique.