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Author's profile photo Ralf Kammerer

Automatic Ticket creation via incoming email

1. Purpose of this document

This document should not replace the detailed system docu and also has no intension to cover all functionalities which C4C offers with regards to tickets.

The intension is to give an example of how the functionality works.

2. use case

– Customer email should be received directly by C4C and a ticket should be created.

– The customer has a dedicated service engineer and wants to contact this engineer. Therefore a ‘personal email address’ is required.

– By sending the email to this ‘personal email address’ the system should create a ticket which is assigned to this service engineer.

– Communication with the customer is done via the ticket.

3. Email addresses-important to know

In order to send emails to C4C you need an email address in C4C where customers can send their email to.

The system can only receive emails which are sent to a generic (system generated) email address which looks like this:

cod.b2b.servicerequest@myxxxxxx.mail.crm.ondemand.com

You have 3 options:

a. You can send emails directly to this address

b. You can define addresses like support@yourcompany.com   or      help@yourcompany.com

c. You can define individual email addresses like Frank.Miller@yourcompany.com

For case a & b you have to map these email addresses on your outlook server to the generic C4C address.

-> the next slide explains how the system recognizes the different addresses.

Our use case is covered by Option c

configuration needs 4 main steps:

step 1 – email address definition

You have to define the personal email addresses for the different service engineers in C4C to which the customer can send his email. This address has to be mapped to the generic C4C email on your mail server. Therefore it makes no sense to use the ‘real ‘ email of the service engineer for this process because if you do so, all emails he gets will end up in C4C.

Email for our example: Herr.Fleddermann@outlook.de

In our example our service engineer is Herr Fleddermann

Please note that the ‘real’ email address is a different one!

Emails sent to Herr.Fleddermann@outlook.de will result in a ticket

Emails sent to x.fleddermann@outlook.de will be received in the mail client

Picture1.png


step 2 – map email on mail server


Since C4C can only receive emails which are sent to the generic email address, the ‘personal’ mail address must be mapped in the mail server to the generic address of C4C.

For my example I have used outlook.com to simulate the mail server.

For the account Herr.Fleddermann@outlook.de I have created the forwarding rule to the C4C system

Picture2.png

step 3 – channel configuration

In order to map the incoming email in C4C to the corresponding service engineer one channel per service engineer has to be defined.

picture 3.JPG

step 4 – determination of service engineer as processor  when ticket is created

The processor of a ticket can be determined in 4 different ways

From the account team

From the relationship in the account

From the user

From the employee workdistribution rule

In our example we use the work distribution rule

picture4.JPG

as a result you can achieve the following process flow:

1. Customer sends email to Herr.Fleddermann@outlook.de

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2. Email is forwarded by the mail server to C4C and Herr Fleddermann is assigned as processor

Picture4.png

3. Herr Fleddermann can communicate via the ticket with the customer . The email address used for this is the one the customer has sent his original mail.

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4. Customer receives answer from Herr.Fleddermann@outlook.com and can start a conversation by responding to it. As long as the ticket is mentioned in the subject, the response will be included in the already existing ticket,

p5.JPG

5. reply is again received in  C4C and you can reply again ….

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      32 Comments
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      Author's profile photo Saurabh Saxena
      Saurabh Saxena

      Super Ralf, is there a possibility that the customer receives an automatic acknowledgement back to his email? Can this acknowledgement carry the ticket ID generated in the system? If there is no standard mechanism, may be workflow can help in this case?

      Another clarification, in case the sender is a contact person for multiple accounts, how does the system determine the account to be associated with the ticket created?

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Yes. This is s standard usecase for email notifications. You will need to create a workflow rule on an event (save or create), condition (channel = email, customer updated = true), action (send email), email template (can be text or html with placeholders of the ticket data), and party (individual customer or contact)

      Author's profile photo Ralf Kammerer
      Ralf Kammerer
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Saurabh with regards to Another clarification, in case the sender is a contact person for multiple accounts, how does the system determine the account to be associated with the ticket created? --> i am not sure...I would expect it will find the account which you can find in the contact header. or it just can not determine an account and it ends in the unassociated email queue. I guess you need to try it out. BR Ralf

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Saurabh, From our setup on Premise for contacts associated to multiple accounts - the system puts the Contact person as the Account and the Contact on the ticket. The idea been - the analyst can then update the ticket accordingly.

      Regards,

      Lankesh

      Author's profile photo Ginger Gatling
      Ginger Gatling

      Super- thanks, Ralf!!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Great material! Thank you!

      Can you use the same mecchannics with sending an email to c4C to creat an activity within an opportunity instead of a ticket?

      Author's profile photo Ralf Kammerer
      Ralf Kammerer
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Nadezhda The described feature is only available for ticket creation. Br ralf

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you for the answer!

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Ralf,

      Can we update the ticket status from inbound email?

      Actually we are sending an email to customer if the products are not under warranty and then customer revert with Accepted and rejected. So after getting such mail from customer w.r.t. a particular ticket we have to change to ticket status according.

      Could you please help us how we can achieve this requirement. Thanks.

       

       

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thank you, very nice blog!

      Is there any filter to prevent tickets getting prevented vi junk mails or addendums to the existing ticket via out of office mails?

      Author's profile photo Ralf Kammerer
      Ralf Kammerer
      Blog Post Author

      Hi Rahul there is no filtering possible in C4C. All filtering must be done on the outlook server and it is then up to outlook which emails are forwarded to C4C br ralf

      Author's profile photo Gustavo Trivelli
      Gustavo Trivelli

      Does anybody knows we can expect in the shorterm  further "Text Analysis" capabilites from SAP C4C in order "interpret" the incoming email content and, based on that, automatically it determine some additional field belonging to the Ticket to be created such us:

      - Service Category

      - Incident Category

      - Cause Category

      - Etc

      It would be helpful whether the development team could leverage the "Text Analysis / Text Mining" capabilities existing on the SAP Hana platform in order include this functionality.

      As part of this, it would be very helpful whether we could customize some "Rules" in order apply the incoming email content in order afterward, the Ticket can be created.

      Gustavo

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Thanks for the explanation. Unfortunately, we were not able to reconstruct it. We've got two email channels configured:

      1) cod.b2b.servicerequest@myxxxxxx.mail.crm.ondemand.com --> generic C4C address

      2) support@test.com --> mail address from support engineer

      How do we manage it that the "channel"-attribute at a ticket is set to the support@test.com address? In our case it is always the channel from the generic C4C address.

      Thanks,

      Lukas

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Lukas,

      The C4C tenant only exposes the technical email addresses (...@myxxxxxx.crm.ondemand.com).  The actual customer-facing address (e.g. support@test.com) needs to be exposed by your mail (e.g. Exchange) server, which would then forward all mails to the technical C4C address.  When receiving the forwarded emails, C4C will recognize the original recipient and use it as the Channel.

      Kind regards,

      Gab

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Gab,

      Sorry maybe I should have explained our situation in more detail:

      A customer sends (e.g. from the address customer@gmail.com) an email to the support@test.com address, which is forwared automatically (or manually by an employee) to the technical email address. The email arrives in the C4C system, but has lost its information about the original sender. The "From"-Address is set to support@test.com and the channel attribute is the technical email address, which makes it inpossible to set Routing-Rules based on the channel attribute.

      If the customer@gmail.com address is assigned to a contact, the email is automatically transformed to a ticket. If not, the email can be found in the section Unassociated E-Mails.

      Best wishes,

      Lukas

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Lukas,

      The email should not be forwarded manually.  In that case, it will naturally lose the original sender and recipient, and become instead an email from the agent to the technical address.

      If you configure automatic email forwarding from the mailbox, the email received by C4C will still have the original sender and recipient.  You can easily test it for example by creating a demo "support" address on outlook.com, and then configuring it to forward all emails to C4C.

      Thanks,

      Gab

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Gab,

      Finally, I was able to get the desired result. Manually as well as automatically message forwarding does not work for me. In my case I've to set the Outlook rule to message redirecting.

      outlook rule.png

      Thank you very much Gab for your replies. They helped me a lot!

      Best wishes,

      Lukas

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Lukas,

       

      I have the same requirement. Even i used redirect option. But it is not working.

      Only the forward option is working for me.

      Any idea?

       

      Thanks,

      Shikha

       

      Author's profile photo Andrew Griffin
      Andrew Griffin

      Hi Lukas (and more for the benefit of anybody else reading this given this question is over 4 years old),

      You are setting a client-side rule here which is not a good idea, it is only processed when you are logged on to your email service.  Email forwarding for C4C should be done server side, so the forwarding / redirection rule (whichever way you choose to do it) should be done on the Exchange server not in the Outlook client.

      I hope this helps.

      Thanks,

      Andrew.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi everyone,

      I need to receive a e-mail in my Outlook and I need that this e-mail automatic opens a ticket in C4C. I made the configurations in the C4C and Outlook, but it is not working and I don’t Know why. If someone can help me! Thanks a lot!


      1) I am using Customers > Accounts.

      So consider that is a corporate account.

      I understand that If I am working with Accounts (corporate account) I need to use the e-mail: cod.servicerequest@myXXXXXX.mail.crm.ondemand.com

      Or I need to use the e-mail: cod.b2b.servicerequest@myXXXXX.mail.crm.ondemand.com?

      I am not using Individual Customers.

      2) Business Configuration > Implementation Project > Scope Project

      I think the scope is correct, but I don´t Know If I forgot anything.

      Service > Customer Care > Service Request Management:

      - Group: E-mail Integration with Service Request Management for Corporate Accounts: Reviewed

      - Group: Maintain Service Requests Automatically from Incoming E-mails: Reviewed

      - Group: E-mail Integration with Service Request Management for Individual Customers: Reviewed

      - Group: E-mails Replies via Microsoft Outlook: Reviewed

      - Group: E-mail Integration with Service Request Management: Reviewed

      Service > Employee Support > Communication Channel – E-mail

      - Group: E-mail Channel Options: Reviewed

      Communication and Information Exchange > Office and Desktop Integration > Integration with Local E-mail Applications

      - Group: Integration with Local E-mail Applications: Reviewed

      Communication and Information Exchange > Business Process Management > Process- Integrated Input and Output Manage

      - Group: E-mail: Reviewed

      3) Administrator > Service and Social > Communications Channel > E-mail Address

      - E-mail address: My e-mail from Outlook (in the test I want that all e-mails that arrives in my inbox goes to the C4C)

      - Channel ID: Ok

      - Channel Name: Ok

      - Channel Direction: Inbound and Outbound

      - Channel Type: Customer Service - Business to consumer (B2C) (I tried with B2B too)

      - Default Customer: Ok

      - Ticket Type: Service Request

      4) Administrator > Service and Social > Work Distribution > Organizational Work Distribution

      Business Area: Service and Support

      - Channel Type: E-mail

      - Channel: (the one mentioned in topic 3)

      5) Configuration in Outlook


      Rule: after I received a e-mail in my inbox, the e-mail will be forward for cod.servicerequest@....


      I don´t Know If I forgot something or I did something wrong.

      But It is not working.


      Thanks!


      Ana


      Author's profile photo Saurabh Saxena
      Saurabh Saxena

      For your case, you should use cod.servicerequest email ID but not b2b one.

      The email should be redirected from Outlook to C4C email ID. I am not sure if you are forward functionality is redirecting or forwarding. The issue with forwarding is that the From address of the email will be replaced with your Outlook sender and this will cause issues in C4C as your outlook email might not exist there as a customer.

      Another thing you should check is whether the email being forwarded from your OUtlook has reached C4C or not. Please check whether you get an email in Unassigned Emails list or if there is any error in web service monitoring. In case, you see an entry on the either place, it means your email has arrived in C4C.

      If you still face an issue, I would suggest that you open an incident as it might require further investigations.

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Ana,

      If you use Accounts and Contacts, then you need to forward the email to:

      cod.b2b.servicerequest@myXXXXXX.crm.ondemand.com

      The system will try to match the sender's address to one of the Contacts in the system.  If the Contact is not found, the email will either end up in Unassociated Emails or become a ticket on a Default Customer, depending on the channel configuration.

      The other address (cod.servicerequest@myXXXXXX.crm.ondemand.com) is used for B2C scenarios: the system looks for the sender among Individual Customers, and if no match is found a new customer is created automatically.

      In order to test if your tenant is set up correctly, try sending an email directly to the technical address.  After a bit of time, the email should show up either in the Queue (as a ticket), or under Unassociated Emails.

      Kind regards,

      Gab

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Gabriele,

      I tried to sending an email directly from my outlook to cod.b2b.servicerequest@myXXXXXX.crm.ondemand.com, and didn´t work.

      So, probably my tenant is not set up correctly.

      Besides the scoping and the channel e-mail.

      Which more things I have to do in my tenant?

      Thanks so much!

      Regards,

      Ana

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Ana,

      My apologies:  you need to include "mail" in the domain.

      cod.b2b.servicerequest@myXXXXXX.mail.crm.ondemand.com

      cod.servicerequest@myXXXXXX.mail.crm.ondemand.com

      Try sending an email to these addresses directly (obviously replacing XXXXXX with your tenant's ID) and let us know.

      Thanks,

      Gab

      Author's profile photo Grace Chuah
      Grace Chuah

      Hi Gab,

      For the B2C scenario we can enter default customer. If a default customer is filled in the email channel setup, the system will not create a new customer if sender address is not found in individual customer list.

      I have entered the default customer. But the system still create the new customer.

      Have I done something wrong?

      Regards,

      Grace Chuah

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Dear Grace Chuah

      Was this issue of yours solved?
      Were individual customers being created even upon maintaining default customer for unrecognized emails?

      Thank you.Suraj

      Author's profile photo Grace Chuah
      Grace Chuah

      Hi Suraj,

      It is working now. On 5 August, the issue was there. I retest for incoming email, the issue has been resolved.

      Thank you so much 🙂

      Regards,

      Grace Chuah

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hello,

      If I reply to the ticket that has been closed, I am expecting to get new ticket created.

      As for now, it works so that new interaction with reply mail is added to the current ticket in status Closed.

      How to change the behavior?

      Thank you,

      Irina

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Irina,

      You should confirm whether tickets are actually being Closed, or only Completed.  To verify this, you can go into Fine Tuning and check the dictionary of ticket statuses. 

      Tickets have a few standard "lifecycle statuses":  Open, In Progress, Completed, Closed. You can then create custom statuses mapped to the standard ones (e.g. 3 different "flavors" of In Progress).  Usually statuses mapped to Closed are not visible in the UI, but can only be set via workflow (e.g. a few months after being completed). 

      The behaviour you describe is expected if the ticket is Completed.  To change it, you need to make sure the ticket is closed.

      Kind regards,

      Gab

      Author's profile photo Joeri Verbeke
      Joeri Verbeke

      Hi,

      is it also possible to create a lead out of an email send to specific email address?

      Or do we need sdk development for this? could you help me with that?

      thanks!

      Author's profile photo Santosh Kumar Vadicherla
      Santosh Kumar Vadicherla

      hi Ralf,

      what is the possibility of creating ticket automatically via incoming phone call ?

      Thanks

      Santosh

       

      Author's profile photo Former Member
      Former Member

      Hi Ralf,

      Are there other ways in which C4C creates a ticket automatically other than an email from the customer or Social Media? If there are, what are they and is it possible without customization(SDK, etc.)?

      Thanks!