Improvements of send email

Thomas_Stromberg

For a long time, I have gathered requests that analysts want the send-email function to have. 

- have an address book so they can look up users in the CMDB.
- Be able to paste an image directly to the body instead of having to attach it as a file
- Be able to have several attached files instead of just 1
- Autocomplete when typing an email-address that uses a lookup from the CMDB.
- Signature function, when analysts X sends an email an signature that the analysts have created is added to the email. (not the email templates) 

[Deleted User]

Great stuff, Thomas!

Eugene_Rack

I agree with all the Send Mail items above. I would also like to add that the option to "Add message to action log" should have the option such that it is always ticked by default as a setting. We have had incidents where an analyst has sent the mail but forgotten to ticket the Add message option.

Thomas_Stromberg

Eugene_Rack said:

I agree with all the Send Mail items above. I would also like to add that the option to "Add message to action log" should have the option such that it is always ticked by default as a setting. We have had incidents where an analyst has sent the mail but forgotten to ticket the Add message option.

It is possible using custom.js script to get the add to message log is checked default. 

/* Set default add to actionlog */
app.custom.formTasks.add('ServiceRequest', null, function (formObj, viewModel) {
    //bind a function to the form ready event
    formObj.boundReady(function () {
//check that 'isPrivate' box!
$("#actionLogisPrivate").trigger("click")
//also check it for the send Email task, but then hide the checkbox so they can't uncheck it
//if you don't want to hide the checkbox, just remove the .hide()
$(".link[data-bind*=sendEmail]").on("click", function () { 
$("#IsAddToLog").trigger("click").closest("div"); 
});
    });
}); 
app.custom.formTasks.add('Incident', null, function (formObj, viewModel) {
    //bind a function to the form ready event
    formObj.boundReady(function () {
//check that 'isPrivate' box!
$("#actionLogisPrivate").trigger("click")
//also check it for the send Email task, but then hide the checkbox so they can't uncheck it
//if you don't want to hide the checkbox, just remove the .hide()
$(".link[data-bind*=sendEmail]").on("click", function () { 
$("#IsAddToLog").trigger("click").closest("div"); 
$("#ChangeStatusToPending").closest("div").hide(); 
});
    });
});
app.custom.formTasks.add('ChangeRequest', null, function (formObj, viewModel) {
    //bind a function to the form ready event
    formObj.boundReady(function () {
//check that 'isPrivate' box!
$("#actionLogisPrivate").trigger("click")
//also check it for the send Email task, but then hide the checkbox so they can't uncheck it
//if you don't want to hide the checkbox, just remove the .hide()
$(".link[data-bind*=sendEmail]").on("click", function () { 
$("#IsAddToLog").trigger("click").closest("div"); 
});
    });
}); 

matsgl

I'd also add to Thomas' suggestions less clunky formatting capabilities regarding email body text. This is a frequent complaint from analysts due to the fact that the HTML text editor is cumbersome (cursor jumping when inserting carriage returns etc.).

Jan_Vidar_Elven

Great suggestions, several which I also regularly get from customers I work with.

Several customers have also asked me about more information in History, eg. who the mail was sent to/cc, and possibly with subject/body.

Thomas_Stromberg

Jan_Vidar_Elven said:

Great suggestions, several which I also regularly get from customers I work with.

Several customers have also asked me about more information in History, eg. who the mail was sent to/cc, and possibly with subject/body.

Yes, i forgot about that one. The analysts is having a hard time to see who was the mail sent to etc. 

Claas_Tews

Are there an option to get e.g. the Name of affected user automatically inserted in the mail body like the mail template in the ServiceManager? This would be very helpfull in e.g. the salutation or other parts in the body.

Adrian_Mataisz

I lot of improvement is need in in this area. How we can get the title of the item in the subject line of the email or link to the work item so when user gets it he/she knows what is the email about?

For some reason we get an error when trying to send the email and add to action log is checked and no Template is used :   "the email message cannot be empty"

Jonathan_Boles

Another helpful feature would be the ability to "default" a particular template so that analysts don't always have to go through and choose a generic support response template. We find that in our environment (especially with the service desk), it would be a great time saver as well as to make communications coming from our ITSC more uniform.

carrie_medine

Adrian_Mataisz said:

I lot of improvement is need in in this area. How we can get the title of the item in the subject line of the email or link to the work item so when user gets it he/she knows what is the email about?

For some reason we get an error when trying to send the email and add to action log is checked and no Template is used :   "the email message cannot be empty"

Adrian_Mataisz it seems you may have an older version as this was fixed, perhaps upgrading to the latest and apply the newest hotfix package.

Adrian_Mataisz

carrie_medine  Thanks you. We'll do, we are on V4.0

Chris_Keander

I agree with all of these.  In addition I would like to see control over how the Subject is formatted so we can have it match the same email subjects we set in our email notification templates.  That way any users that have custom rules set up in their mail client will still process mail sent from this task the same way.

Example:  I've configured our email templates to have the following formats:
IT Service Desk - Incident Created [IRxxxxxx]
IT Service Desk - Incident Updated [IRxxxxxx]
IT Service Desk - Incident Resolved [IRxxxxxx]
etc.

Geoff_Ross

Something that night help: A different approach to email notification from within tickets is to use the addition of an analyst comment (non private) in the action log to trigger an email. This can be done with Cireson Notify Analyst App, a SCSM event workflow or a custom Runbook. This allows you to control the many aspects of the email such subject (pulling in work item ID and title) header, salutation (pulling in affected users first name), the comment written, a link to the work item in the portal etc etc. Plus, you don't need to worry about adding to action log as it's already there. Does that make any sense / help anyone?

Chris_Keander

Yes.  We're doing that as well.  But if you need to also send an attachment, you either have to use some form of mail client or the Send Email task, and then we're back to square one.

Michael_Baldry

Geoff_Ross said:

Something that night help: A different approach to email notification from within tickets is to use the addition of an analyst comment (non private) in the action log to trigger an email. This can be done with Cireson Notify Analyst App, a SCSM event workflow or a custom Runbook. This allows you to control the many aspects of the email such subject (pulling in work item ID and title) header, salutation (pulling in affected users first name), the comment written, a link to the work item in the portal etc etc. Plus, you don't need to worry about adding to action log as it's already there. Does that make any sense / help anyone?

We use these notification subscriptions on analyst comments, but still have a need for the send e-mail task: analysts like having a quick way to email someone else (not the affected end user) about a work item, while also keeping a record that the communication happened in the action log. Since we never really want to use this to email the end user (as the automatic notification is much more convenient), we run into this problem constantly - it doesn't work very well for the people that we actually want to email, since there's no address book, spellcheck, or auto-completion, but we still want to use the task, since it's very handy having all communication stored in one place (the action log), rather than sending emails out individually.  It'd be awesome if this task could be made a bit more user-friendly.

Leigh_Kilday

We don't use Send Email in the portal because we require a specific string for security classifications to be present in the message body (if not the message header).

It would be most useful for us if we could select the classification via dropdown box and it applies the text to the email body after clicking Send.

matsgl said:

I'd also add to Thomas' suggestions less clunky formatting capabilities regarding email body text. This is a frequent complaint from analysts due to the fact that the HTML text editor is cumbersome (cursor jumping when inserting carriage returns etc.).

+1

Suat_Ugurlu

Another feature would be "set as private" if the email is added to the action log. . Sometimes we need to send an email to the users' manager but don't want the input to be seen by the user.

Eugene_Rack

I agree with Suat, an option for Setting as Private in the Send Mail would be a great idea.

matsgl

Yet another suggestion based on the needs of a customer: Add the ability to automatically copy Description field content into the mail body. It is sometimes a problem that the recipient cannot make sense of an email question without the full context of the work item. A hyperlink straight into the work item helps but is not always the solution if others than the Affected User are copied into the email.

Mathias_Vandendriess

Suat_Ugurlu said:

Another feature would be "set as private" if the email is added to the action log. . Sometimes we need to send an email to the users' manager but don't want the input to be seen by the user.

This option would be nice. if we use the send email a lot. we like to track everthing so we add it to the action log but if we send it to the affected users he gets the information double because we can't set the action log to private in the send email task.

Sean_Terry

Mathias_Vandendriess said:

Suat_Ugurlu said:

Another feature would be "set as private" if the email is added to the action log. . Sometimes we need to send an email to the users' manager but don't want the input to be seen by the user.

This option would be nice. if we use the send email a lot. we like to track everthing so we add it to the action log but if we send it to the affected users he gets the information double because we can't set the action log to private in the send email task.

Set as private would be very good addition!

Nick_Flint

matsgl said:

Yet another suggestion based on the needs of a customer: Add the ability to automatically copy Description field content into the mail body. It is sometimes a problem that the recipient cannot make sense of an email question without the full context of the work item. A hyperlink straight into the work item helps but is not always the solution if others than the Affected User are copied into the email.

I'd like to see Work Item tags in the template fully parsed. This would include the description and any other related information.

Paul_Dalkin

It would be handier still if the designated 'Send From' could be aliased as the Assigned User rather than a generic source. I'm not an Exchange admin so this is sent in good faith and ignorant of the ramifications...... 

Peter_Settle

Yes unfortunately Send From can be frowned upon as its open to abuse and could infringe your companies data protection and security policies.

Sharon_Spears

Also support 110%:

• multiple attachments
• email recipient lookup (rather than typing)
• Signature function
  

PLUS, I  would add

• Ability to set 'add to message to action log' ticked as default (optional setting)
• Sent To and CC addresses added to action log with message body.

It would be good to have the recipients email addresses added to the message log (like in the console does) ATM only the email body is added to the action log.  You can't actually tell who it was sent to (not even in the history).  Unless you add the sent to users addresses within the content of the email - you have no accurate email trail of who it was sent too.

Marek_Lefek

I would also Add option that the email sender is displaying as named user, not only email adres - eg. USERNAME <usermail@example.com>.

Ingrid_Glatz

I'd like to have the recipients email addresses in the action log, too. We always struggle with information in the action log that it's not visible to whom a mail has been sent. It's not always the affected user and sometimes, somebody has been added in CC.

Sharon_Spears

The new feature @mention tagging in the latest version of the portal, for me, addresses having the recipients of the email identified in the message log when using the Send email function.  It adds them quickly and automatically to the 'send to' line.

I use this @mention feature a lot in both sent email and comment logs.  I've modified the email template that goes out for the action log to customise it for our organisation.

Some of the other feature still mentioned in this post would be good to have, like multiple attachments and signature function.

Matt_Elliott

I've been wanting to submit several feature requests for SendMail for a while now, so hopefully this is the place to do it. I see some of the previous requests have been addressed, but I feel like the SendMail feature still needs a lot of work. Most of these items have been around for years on the various console add-ins. Here is a short list of things we're desperately needing to mirror our console solution...

• Ability to send-as assigned user/tech sending the email. portal-token
• Auto-signature of tech
• We really need the ability to insert work-item related info. Not having this ability really hampers us on how agile we can be with our responses. Further more, it breaks outlooks threading of the ticket. Our notifications use "IR# - Title" in the subject line so that the emails retain their threading when viewed in Outlook. Not being able to use a template with work-item related inserts breaks this for us. 

Marek_Lefek

Go to Developing. Great! Waiting for results