E-mail listeners process

Using e-mail listener definitions, the E-mail Listeners application polls the mail server for incoming messages and sends e-mail messages in response. The response e-mail messages confirm that a desired operation was performed on behalf of the user. The e-mail messages also notifies you if there was an error performing the operation.

When the mail server receives an incoming e-mail message, the following events occur:
  • The mail server polls for incoming e-mail messages from the designated e-mail account.
  • The E-mail Listeners application verifies that the senders of the incoming e-mail messages have person records. If the sender has a person record, the e-mail message is processed. If the sender does not have a person record, the e-mail message is ignored.
  • A preprocessor determines whether the e-mail messages are new or updates to existing communications.
  • The e-mail messages are staged, which includes the following events:
    • Processing the e-mail message body to locate the content IDs of embedded images.
    • Extracting content from the e-mail messages, including attachments.
    • Storing content in staging tables and attached document tables.
    • Launching the e-mail processing workflow process.
    • If the e-mail listener was configured to use Java™ Messaging Service (JMS) queues, placing e-mail messages in the JMS queue indicating that a new e-mail message needs to be processed. A messaging component picks up this e-mail message from the queue and launches the workflow.
  • Using the predefined workflow process, the following events occur:
    • Flagging an e-mail message as new or as an update to an existing service request, incident, or problem
    • For new e-mail messages, creating a service request, incident, or problem, and creating an associated communication log
    • For existing e-mail messages, updating the service request, incident, or problem, and creating an entry in the communication log