Inbound email embedded images are being added as attachments to the target record - Support and Troubleshooting

Inbound email embedded images are being added as attachments to the target record Issue  When inbound emails are received by an instance, all the embedded images, signatures, or files get attached to the target task record, i.e. the Incident table, along with the actual attachments based on the inbound email action.

This is an out-of-box behaviour and can be an issue for users not wanting signatures or images as final attachments into the task table records. It is advisable to implement a custom business rule to prevent storing unwanted attachments, or prevent updating the target record.

Cause There is nothing standard in an incoming MIME email to distinguish whether an image attachment is an unwanted signature or similar file to discard. When images arrive in an email, they may or may not have a file name, depending on the sending email application, and they will have attributes like content type and byte size. Thus, there are no characteristics to filter on that to be 100% correct for all users all the time, such that it could be implemented as an out-of-box feature.

The only data available to do any sort of filtering is that which is stored in the sys_attachment table, such as size, filename, content type. The byte size feature was added as a shortcut for a commonly seen business rule for customers to add to use filtering, but still not 100% useful for all users.

Resolution This procedure can help administrators to customize the instance accordingly:

1) The image filtering properties can be set up in the [sys_properties] table as per requirements:

https://docs.servicenow.com/csh?topicname=email-image-filters.html&version=latest

2) System Property glide.email.inbound.convert_html_inline_attachment_references

https://docs.servicenow.com/csh?topicname=r_AdditionalProperties.html&version=latest

3) It is possible to create a Business Rule on the [sys_attachment] table to remove small embedded image attachments.

https://community.servicenow.com/community?id=community_question&sys_id=e444cb29dbd8dbc01dcaf3231f9619d5