How To Remove or Limit Attachments for Incoming Emails - Support and Troubleshooting

How To Remove or Limit Attachments for Incoming Emails Description The default behavior for a ServiceNow instance is to include any attachments on an inbound email (such as images or documents) as an attachment also to the record created from that incoming email. In addition, the attachments, particularly images, will appear in the activity stream of that record type (such as an Incident).

In many cases this may not be the preferred behavior, as these attachments may often consist of company logos, email signatures and other files that do not have any bearing on the actual record created or the email received. This KB Article will describe how certain system properties on the instance can be configured to help limit the inclusion of some of these attachments in the records that are created from the incoming email.

Cause The ServiceNow Platform includes two specific system properties that can be used to help modify this behavior:

glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.minimum_bytes glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.action The value of these properties can thus be modified on the ServiceNow instance which can help to reduce the inclusion of files in the new record which may not be relevant to the actual created record.

Resolution The first of these properties, glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.minimum_bytes , sets a minimum threshold size (in bytes) for which to consider filtering or limiting an attachment. In other words, any attachment included or embedded within the email that is smaller than the size specified for this property will be considered for filtering to not be attached and included with the created record. The default value for this property is 0, a value which indicates that no file of any size will be considered for filtering and thus every attachment will be included. To update this property, the following steps can be used:

Log into the instance with an account having admin rights to that instance.

In the Filter navigator text search field, type sys_properties.list and press the Enter key.

A list of System Properties as found on that instance will appear. Filter the list to locate the system property with the name glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.minimum_bytes . Once this system property record is located, open that record for editing.

Set the Value field of the property to the size in bytes which you would prefer to set the threshold for which all attachments of a size smaller than this will be considered for filtering from the record created from that email. Leave all the other fields in the records as already set.

Click the Update button to save the record.

This can be useful as signature and logo files in an incoming email tend to be smaller in size and thus selecting an appropriate value for the value of this property can help alleviate some of the unneeded attachments that may be included with these emails.

The next property which should be considered in adjusting the attachment policies on your instance for incoming emails is the system property with the name glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.action .

This system property is used in conjunction with the glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.minimum_bytes property to determine what to do with the attachments which are thus smaller than the byte size specified in the glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.minimum_bytes property.

The procedure to modify this property is similar to that for the glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.minimum_bytes property:

Log in to the instance with an account having admin rights. In the Filter navigator text field type sys_properties.list and press the Enter key. A list of System Properties as found on that instance will appear. Filter the list to locate the property with the name glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.action and open this system property record for editing. Set the Value field in the system property to one of three options: AttachTarget - This option attaches the filtered record to the target record created by the incoming email. The attachment will show as an attachment to the record as well as in the activity stream for that record. AttachEmail - This option will cause the filtered attachment to be attached to the email but not to the target record created by the incoming email. AttachNone - This option will cause the attachment to neither be attached to the target record created by the incoming email nor the email record itself.

Note that only the options AttachTarget , AttachEmail or AttachNone are recognized, so the text typed into the Value field for the property must be typed exactly as shown (including using the case as shown). Any other value typed in will not be recognized and will thus cause the system to behave with the default behavior.

The default value for a new out-of-box system for this system property is AttachTarget which will cause the attachments to be associated to the email and the target record created from the email.

After typing in the appropriate string into the Value field, click the Update button to save the system property record. A few important notes regarding the use of these system properties to control the behavior of attachments as associated to incoming email records and the record created by that incoming email:

If the glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.minimum_bytes property is set to the default value of 0, all attachments regardless of size are included in the created record and the email, regardless of what option is selected in the glide.email.inbound.image_sys_attachment.filter.action property. These system properties do not discriminate amongst an image attachment and any other attachment type, so the behavior as configured for these properties will apply to an attachment of any type and that has any file extension. In the cases where AttachNone is selected, the attachments to the email are not deleted or lost, but can still be found in the sys_attachment table. The attachment will also still appear if the Show Email Details option is selected or the Preview HTML Email options from the activity stream action options. Additional Information Review the following ServiceNow Docs site page which also contains a description of these properties and the uses of these properties.

Email image filtering properties