Overview
The Email to Ticket service deals with those emails that come into the system rather than those notifications going out of Vivantio. The way that this works is that a designated mailbox is periodically scanned by the email to ticket service. Any mail item found within that mailbox is then added to Vivantio, either creating a new Ticket or appending to an existing Ticket. The mail item is then deleted from the mailbox.
This functionality can provide a simple route into the system for Callers, in that they can reply to notification emails received and update the Ticket history with the relevant information they would like to provide. Appending to existing Tickets is managed by a reference number included in the email subject. Without a valid reference in the subject a new Ticket will be created instead. The type of Ticket created in this way will be set in the email to ticket service configuration. It is possible to have any number of mailboxes scanned in this way, each by a separate instance of the email to ticket service.
If this facility would be useful, then consideration is needed as to which mailbox or mailboxes are to be scanned. Typically a new mailbox is created specifically for this purpose. Considering that this is a mailbox that Callers will send emails to, it may be preferable to have an email address that conforms to a corporate standard in terms of email suffix and so may well be a mailbox hosted internally. Wherever it is hosted the email to ticket service will need to have permission to access that mailbox which may require exceptions to be included in the corporate firewall.
The Email Service monitors a predefined mail account and processes all messages received to that account, converting them to new tickets that appear in the “Pending” queue in the ticket system areas.
Vivantio can support the monitoring of multiple mailboxes; each monitored mailbox is managed through the Email to Ticket Service.
- Emails are sent from the Customer to your Email Server
- Every few minutes emails are retrieved from your Email Server & logged in Vivantio
- Emails are deleted from your Email Server once they have been retrieved to ensure the ticket is reported only once
- Emails are sent directly to the customer from Vivantio
Please be aware: If your email server is behind a Firewall then exceptions may need to be included to ensure the email service can read the mailbox.
Warning! Please remember that all mail will be read and deleted by Vivantio Email Service, it is very important that your mailbox does not contain emails which you do not wish to be deleted.
Google Gmail
Please see our Privacy Policy for Email Access via Google Mail (Gmail): https://www.vivantio.com/privacy-policy-google/
Exchange / Office 365
For creating connections to an Exchange Web Services server or Office 365 Mailbox, you need to specify the server address.
For Office 365 this address will always be: https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx
For Exchange it would be something like: https://mail.domain.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx
POP3 or IMAP
Create a POP3 or IMAP enabled mailbox on your email server that will receive the mail messages and obtain the following information to populate the Vivantio Admin Area:
- The external name of your company's email server i.e. mailgate.example.com
- Email account name i.e. support@example.com
- Password used to authenticate with the email account
- Which protocol is used to access the mailbox i.e. IMAP or POP3
- Which port is used to access the mailbox i.e.
- POP3 port 110 (TCP)
- POP3 SSL 995 (TCP)
- IMAP 143 (TCP)
- IMAP SSL 993 (TCP)
There are a few important things to note:
- If your Exchange server is on premise your firewall may need to set up with a rule to allow through the IP address of the Vivantio Platform. Please contact support for this information if needed
- If you are using Gmail or Office 365 and have Multi Factor Authentication setup you will need to generate an App Password for that email account and use that instead of the normal Password for that mailbox.
Please see the following links, these links are external to Vivantio and Vivantio cannot be held responsible for information within these pages and you should ensure that you are following your company's IT and Security Policies, again Vivantio cannot take any responsibility for changes made to your local email environment.
Office 365: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/account-billing/manage-app-passwords-for-two-step-verification-d6dc8c6d-4bf7-4851-ad95-6d07799387e9
Gmail: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833?hl=en
Office 365 Modern Authentication
Please see further details in the Separate Help Articles:
Modern Authentication Permissions
Guidance
The below are step by step instructions to setting up your Email to Ticket service. Please ensure that you have all the credentials and settings needed before setting this up.
Warning! Please remember that all mail will be read and deleted by Vivantio Email Service, it is very important that your mailbox does not contain emails which you do not wish to be deleted.
Navigated to Admin Area > Integration & API > Email to Ticket > Mailboxes
To add a Mailbox:
Click Add
Enter a name for the Email to Ticket instance
Tick the box to enable the mailbox
In the Credentials tab:
Select the Server Type, POP3 or IMAP or Exchange / Office365
Enter a Server/IP Address
Tick the box to enable SSL if required
Enter a Port Number
Enter your Login Name and Password
Enter the Mail From Address which is the email address your emails will appear to come from for tickets created though this Email to Ticket Service
At the bottom of the dialogue it is possible to test the ability to read the specified mailbox with a successful test displaying a message reporting on the number of emails found in that mailbox
Click Test to find out if the Email Service is able to connect to the mailbox specified in the Credentials tab
Click here to trouble shoot if you receive a notification like this: “An error was encountered trying to connect to the mailbox ‘Tech Support'. This mailbox has failed to connect 101 times consecutively and will be automatically disabled. Please check your connection settings or contact support@vivantio.com for further information.”
In the Mail Processing tab:
• Select the default Ticket Type that is to be created from the drop down box. Please note that if 'Update Tickets Only' is selected in the Available Actions setting then it does not matter what the Default Ticket Type is set to. This setting is for ticket creation only.
• Select the available Actions from the drop down box, do you want to just create or create and update Tickets? If you simply just want to Update Tickets Only then additional configuration settings will appear as shown in the screen shot on the right. These will allow you to manage emails with no Ticket Number or an incorrect Ticket Number, by a sending a Response Email (Email Template must be created) to the original sender. Please note that emails received in this circumstance will not be processed.
• Select an Internal Email Template - this is the email template sent to notify the Notification email address
• Enter a Notification email address; the email address entered will be notified when an email has created a ticket in the system.
• Select a Customer Email Template - this is the email template sent to notify the original sender of an email if it creates a ticket
• Auto Match on Subject - With this option selected an email can update an existing ticket even if there is no ticket reference in the subject. The email will match on the ticket title and the subject of the email (with the 'forward' and 'reply' prefixes removed) AND who sent the email.
• Match Mail From becomes available when the Auto Match on Subject is enabled and sets who needs to have sent the email for the Auto Match on Subject to update a ticket.
In the Ticket Type Mapping tab:
In some circumstances a single mailbox that is to be subject to the Email to Ticket Service may need to create tickets of different types dependent on the 'To' address that the email was sent to (for example by using aliases).
Important, if you wish to use the alias feature with Office 365 (Exchange) please contact our Support team. O365 converts aliases back to the primary email address and so Vivantio need to enable functionality to extract the alias address from the email header.
If additional ticket types need to be created in addition to the default ticket type specified in the Mail Processing tab then additional lines should be added to the Ticket Type Mapping tab. For each line:
• Email Address - the 'To' email address that identifies the email to be processed that it should not create a default ticket type.
• Ticket Type - the ticket type that is to be created
• Available Actions, Internal Email Template, Notification Address and Customer Email Template - as for the default ticket type in the Mail Processing tab but for email sent to the Email Address identified in the 'Email Address' field
• Click Save
To edit a Mailbox:
• Tick the box of the Mailbox you wish to edit
• Click Edit
• Make your changes
• Click Save
To delete a Mailbox:
• Tick the box of the Mailbox you wish to delete
• Click Delete
• Click OK
Updated: 26 May 2023