You can define which keywords must appear in an inbound e-mail subject line to update a process or generate a status report.

Users of type Contact must have a Primary Group set using the Administration component before they can log incidents or other processes.

To define the keywords in an inbound e-mail subject line:

1. In the Subject Keyword Settings group, type the keyword(s) that must appear in an inbound e-mail subject line to update a process or generate a status report.
   If you use symbols in your subject line, make sure that the syntax is the same: that is, if you put a space before a colon in your keyword settings, then a space must appear before the colon on the incoming e-mail message. If the syntax is different, then a new Process would be logged rather than an existing Process being updated.
2. Click to save your new settings.
   The new settings are put into effect on any incoming e-mail from this point onwards.

If an inbound email includes a keyword in the subject line, the system uses the first number that appears in the subject line to identify the process.
If you set the 'Update' Keyword to Update:, then an e-mail with the subject line Update: 33 will update the mapped process with the ID 33 and the subject line RE: test 678 Update: 33 will update the mapped process with the ID 678.
If you set the 'Status' Keyword to Status:, then an e-mail with the subject line Status: 33 will return to the user a status report for the process with the ID 33, provided the inbound email is from the Raise User. An e-mail with the subject line Status: (not specifying an ID) will return to the user a status report for all processes where they are the Raise User. The status report is set from the Reports branch of the E-mail Setup tree. Set this to AutoEmailReport.rpt.

You can set up e-mails that are sent in response to inbound e-mail to acknowledge that Mail has successfully created, updated or changed the status of a process. These reply messages are generic for all inbound e-mail, regardless of mail box.

You can create the following reply messages:

Successful Creation/Update – Sent when an e-mail is successfully created or when a process is successfully updated.

General Creation/Update Failure – Sent when an e-mail failed to create or update a process.

Unprivileged Action – Sent when the e-mail is from someone who does not have the privilege to proceed with a particular action.

Process Unavailable – Sent when the process cannot identify a particular business function because it does not exist in the process. For example, if you try to add a note when the process has no Add Note functionality.

Invalid Process Identifier – Sent when the supplied reference number does not match any records.

You can also insert data place holders into the reply messages. Place holders are attribute codes that enable you to customise the response e-mail content by inserting individual information from relevant records within your data source.

Reply messages can contain any of the following data place holders:

{ACTION} – The requested action generated by an inbound e-mail.

{IDENTIFIER} – The process reference number.

{PROCESS} – The name of the process that the inbound e-mail affects.

If you want to send your e-mails in HTML, then you need to know some HTML formatting. You don’t need a great deal of experience, but you should at least know the basics. For example: Thank you for your e-mail. Your {PROCESS} has been logged with the following ID: <STRONG>{IDENTIFIER}</STRONG>. This puts the Identifier in bold.

To set up reply messages for Action Settings:

1. In the Reply Messages group box, type the messages that you want to send in response to actions taken because of inbound e-mails.
   These messages are sent to all inbound e-mails, regardless of mail box.
2. Include any Place holders where necessary.
3. Click to save the reply messages.
   The new settings are put into effect on any incoming e-mail from this point onwards.

Your mail system may receive hundreds of e-mails each day, and not all of those messages need to be part of a process. You can specify specific subjects to ignore.

To specify subjects to ignore:

1. In the Subjects To Ignore group box, click Add.
   
   The Subject to Ignore dialog appears.
2. Type the required subject, then click OK.
   
   The subject appears in the Subjects to ignore list.
3. Repeat as required.

To remove a subject, select it in the list, then click Remove.

In the same way that you may want Mail to ignore specific subjects, you can specify that any e-mails from specific e-mail addresses are ignored.

To specify an e-mail address to ignore:

1. In the E-mail Addresses To Ignore group box, click Add.
   
   The E-mail Address to Ignore dialog appears.
2. Type the required e-mail address, then click OK.
3. Repeat as required.

To remove an e-mail address, select it in the list, then click Remove.

Users replying to automatic emails can cause difficulties, because the subject line of subsequent e-mails can be complicated by the addition of prefixes such as RE:. One way of overcoming this is to use a No Reply e-mail box to send the reply message, and to configure the reply message to include mailto links that create the appropriate update or status subject lines.

For example, to send an e-mail to update the incident, include a link similar to:

<a href="mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Update: {Id}">