Email Learning Path<!-- /*NS Branding Styles*/ --> .ns-kb-css-body-editor-container { p { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } span { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, #000000); } h2 { font-size: 24pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h3 { font-size: 18pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } h4 { font-size: 14pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--text-primary, black); } a { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718F); } a:hover { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #024F69); } a:target { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #032D42); } a:visited { font-size: 12pt; color: var(--now-color--link-primary, #00718f); } ul { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } li { font-size: 12pt; font-family: Lato; } img { display: ; max-width: ; width: ; height: ; } } Table of Contents 1. Email Configuration POP3 & IMAPMicrosoft GraphSMTPServiceNow mailboxes & customer mail servers 2. Inbound emails Inbound email processingInbound actions & inbound email flowsEmail logs In the instanceIn the ServiceNow mail servers Automatic responsesImage filtering and attachmentsEmail filtersSpam and virus filteringMultiple email readers 3. Outbound emails Outbound email creation NotificationsWorkflowsScriptingEmail ClientWorkspace & Playbook Email Client Email logs In the instanceIn the ServiceNow mail servers SPF & DKIM for outbound emailsSMS notificationsDynamic translationsEmail digestsSubscription-based notifications 4. Related topics Meeting invitesSystem address filtersS/MIME - signing and encrypting/decrypting emails 1. Email Configuration Quick overview: ServiceNow platform allows an instance to read emails from multiple email accounts to retrieve information into the instance. It also allows to generate emails using an email account to send information and updates to end users or other email enabled systems. Email is the most common integration used by almost all of our customers. Every instance will have an Email Diagnostics page at https://<instance>.service-now.com/email_diagnostics.do useful for diagnosing both inbound and outbound email issues [Documentation]. While this page provides a quick look at multiple settings and data with links to email jobs, the page is not configurable and may mislead instance administrators as it will display a red "Non-Operational" message when the processing time is not "within the [undocumented] expected range". Please note that the Email Diagnostics page is not configurable and it does not have an API for integration with any sort of monitoring system. Additional properties are available in our documentation [Documentation]. Please note that not all properties are documented. Email Configuration information is available at KB0957759 and at ServiceNow Developer Training. POP3 & IMAP POP3 & IMAP are two commonly used email protocols for reading emails from email servers. For debugging and troubleshooting, you may enable glide.pop3.debug / glide.imap.debug or enable debugging in the email account record properties by selecting "Enable debug output" [Documentation]. Please note that these properties will log all email content in node logs. In a busy instance, they can generate gigabytes of logs in a short time if there is a lot of email traffic, therefore it is not recommended to leave them on in a production instance for a long time. Microsoft Graph Microsoft Graph API is the name for a family of APIs provided by Microsoft for accessing Microsoft products. In the context of email configuration, ServiceNow has recently introduced the ability to connect to Microsoft email servers using the Microsoft Graph API starting with Tokyo. Requires the glide.email.graph plugin [Documentation]. For debugging and troubleshooting, you may enable glide.graph_receive.debug or enable debugging in the account properties by selecting "Enable debug output" [Documentation]. You should also need to enable OAuth debugging via com.snc.platform.security.oauth.debug and REST API debugging via glide.rest.debug since these components are also used. SMTP SMTP is a common protocol used for sending and receiving emails. However, the platform uses SMTP only for sending emails. For debugging and troubleshooting, you may enable glide.smtp.debug or enable debugging in the account properties by selecting "Enable debug output" [Documentation]. Please note that this property will log all email content in node logs. In a busy instance, it can generate gigabytes of logs in a short time if there is a lot of email traffic, therefore it is not recommended to leave it on in a production instance for a long time. ServiceNow mailboxes & customer mail servers Every instance comes with an out of the box mailbox configured for sending and receiving emails using the <instance>@service-now.com mail address. You may use this mailbox by activating the two sys_email_account records or you may configure other email accounts [Documentation]. If there are any issues with the <instance>@service-now.com accounts, the first action is usually reprovisioning these accounts in the instance by following KB0540748. The reprovisioning operation does not remove any existing data from the mailbox itself so there is no risk of losing unread emails. It is possible to configure the instance to read emails from multiple email accounts. It is up to the customer if they want to keep the <instance>@service-now.com account for reading emails or not [Documentation]. It is not recommended to delete the accounts, they may be kept Active = False indefinitely. A common request is additional @service-now.com mailboxes for an instance. ServiceNow provides a single mailbox per instance [KB0859856]. An instance can have only one SMTP account for sending emails. The platform simply lacks the logic to decide which SMTP account to use for an email if multiple accounts were defined. Therefore an instance can send emails through ServiceNow email servers or through any email server that supports SMTP. See Outbound Emails -> SPF & DKIM for sending emails section for more information. While an instance can generate thousands of outbound mails per minute and the ServiceNow cloud can relay millions of emails per hour, ServiceNow does not provide any guarantees on when emails will be delivered or any SLAs on the rate of emails that can be sent from an instance due to the way email protocols have been designed. See KB0952320. 2. Inbound emails Quick overview: The platform provides flexibility on what actions to take depending on the contents of an email. Inbound email FAQ is available at KB0957760. Troubleshooting KB is available at KB0524472 with several videos from the ServiceNow Support channel. Inbound email processing The platform retrieves and processes emails in two stages. The instance uses the Email Reader scheduled job to retrieve emails from email servers listed in the sys_email_account table. The Email Reader will log into one account and retrieve emails until all the unread emails are retrieved. It will then repeat this for the next account for each account in the sys_email_account table. The Email Reader will log an email.read event for each email that is retrieved and written into the sys_email table. This is the first stage of reading emails. [ServiceNow Support Channel troubleshooting | 5 min] In the second stage, email.read events will be processed by the events processor scheduled job. The events processor will go through each inbound action and inbound email flow that matches the email. This is the second stage of processing emails. Therefore inbound emails are heavily dependent on proper functioning of scheduled jobs and event processing in an instance as explained in KB0520595 [ServiceNow Support Channel troubleshooting | 4 min]. Inbound actions & inbound email flows Inbound actions allow the platform to run specific actions for incoming emails. These may be as simple as changing an attribute of a record or making changes to multiple records in complex ways using scripts [ServiceNow Support Channel introduction | 0:23 - 01:44] [ServiceNow Dev Program Video | 4 min] [ServiceNow Support Channel troubleshooting | 2 min] [ServiceNow Support Channel troubleshooting | 3 min] [ServiceNow Developer Training]. Inbound email flows have been recently introduced and allow customers to use the Flow Designer for low-code/no-code workflows for incoming emails. In terms of capabilities, both inbound actions and inbound email flows are capable of both simple and complex operations [Documentation] [ServiceNow Support Channel video | 1 min] [ServiceNow Dev Program Video | 5 min] [ServiceNow Developer Training] [TOI | 24 min]. A common question is regarding the deprecation of inbound actions since inbound email flows have been introduced. At the time of this article, there are no plans to deprecate inbound email actions or move/convert existing actions in the platform to flows. Email logs In the instance An instance will log information on the email including its message-id and its classification. Depending on the email, the instance will also log information regarding which inbound email flows and inbound actions were evaluated on the sys_email record. These logs are available in the syslog_email table and under each sys_email record as a related list. [Documentation KB0563560] The same logs can also be accessed in the application node logs by searching for "EMAIL.<sys_id of the sys_email record>". In the ServiceNow mail servers If an email is received through the <instance>@service-now.com email account, and if the email is not received by the instance, please check the instance logs with the message-id. If no logs are found, ServiceNow Support can help with checking the logs of ServiceNow mail servers. Automatic responses It is possible to configure an instance to send an automatic reply email to the sender of an email by using an inbound action of Action Type = Reply Email [Documentation]. Image filtering and attachments It is possible to configure an instance to ignore attachments that arrive with incoming emails based on the attachment size [Documentation]. Attachment processing for inbound emails was improved in New York with the introduction of the Email Attachment table [Documentation]. Email filters It is possible to configure an instance to ignore emails depending on specific attributes of the email. Instances since Kingston come with the Email Filters plugin [Documentation] but the plugin may be disabled. See KB0549426 for detailed instructions on how to filter inbound emails. Spam and virus filtering All emails received through the <instance>@service-now.com email account are scanned for spam and viruses [Documentation]. It is well documented on how to change the platform behaviour at KB0549426. For advanced security requirements, not available with the <instance>@service-now.com email account, it is recommended to use your own email server accounts which may provide additional security such as a specific antivirus engine, sandbox scanning, URL or link checkers. Multiple email readers An instance can only have one email reader job by default. Email account groups were introduced so that an instance can have one email reader job per email account group so that emails from multiple accounts may be retrieved in parallel [Documentation]. This feature is useful when the instance has a mailbox that gets where there is increased traffic and another mailbox which needs to be regularly processed with minimum delay. 3. Outbound emails Quick overview: The platform provides flexibility on how to notify users using email notifications. It is important to note that both the platform and the <instance>@service-now.com email account are not designed for sending large amounts of marketing emails. See KB0952320. Outbound email FAQ is available for public at KB0957766. Outbound email creation The platform can generate outbound emails in different ways. Notifications Notifications can be event or record or flow based. While these may have different capabilities, all three depend on the event processing capabilities of the platform, therefore email notifications are heavily dependent on proper functioning of event processing in an instance [Documentation] [ServiceNow Support Channel introduction | 01:44 - 06:00] [ServiceNow Dev Program Video | 2 min] [ServiceNow Developer Training]. Workflows Workflows are an older capability in the platform to provide low code capabilities similar to the more modern Flow Designer. Workflows have an out of the box notification activity for sending emails [Documentation]. Scripting It is possible to directly insert records into the sys_email table using a script. The SMTP Sender job will process and send any sys_email records created with the correct attributes. Email Client The Email Client allows users to send email directly from any record using the Email Client link. It has its own UI similar to a basic email application [Documentation] [ServiceNow TechNow Video | 40 min]. The Email Client went through several improvements in New York including Quick Messages functionality and email client attachment handling. Another improvement was added in Quebec to improve the auto-complete recipient feature [Documentation]. Workspace & Playbook Email Client The Workspace UI provides its own email client which is not based on the Email Client. It is important to note that this email client is newer and does not share the same codebase and functionalities of the Email Client [Documentation]. Email logs In the instance The notification engine will log information on the sys_email record regarding how it was created and how the recipients were calculated unless the sys_email record is created by scripting. These logs are available in the syslog_email table and under each sys_email record as a related list. [Documentation] The same logs can also be accessed in the application node logs by searching for "EMAIL.<sys_id of the sys_email record>". In the ServiceNow mail servers If an email is sent through the <instance>@service-now.com email account and it is not accepted by the third party mail server, this will be captured by the ServiceNow email servers and it will be returned to the instance as a bounce message. Such emails can be accessed by System Mailboxes -> Inbound -> Junk. If no bounce messages are found, ServiceNow Support can help with checking the logs of ServiceNow mail servers on why the email was rejected or not delivered. Please provide the message-id in the case description. SPF & DKIM for outbound emails SPF & DKIM are DNS standards used for blocking unauthorised emails such as (but not limited) spam and phishing. They are used in conjunction with a third standard called DMARC. An email that does not comply to the SPF & DKIM records of the company that sent the email may be blocked by the recipient email server. Any such issues are handled using the DMARC record of the company. For outbound emails, there are several possibilities for SPF & DKIM. An instance may be * sending emails as <instance>@service-now.com using the <instance>@service-now.com account. In this scenario, ServiceNow email servers sign all emails using ServiceNow DKIM settings and the emails will be sent from servers listed in the ServiceNow SPF record [KB0535456 & [KB0695182]. * sending emails as <anything>@<customer domain> using the <instance>@service-now.com account. In this scenario, ServiceNow email servers sign all emails if the customer follows KB1002273 and configures their SPF according to KB0535456. * sending emails as <anything>@<customer domain> using own mail account. In this scenario, it is up to the email server used to configure SPF & DKIM. SMS notifications The platform allows sending SMS notifications using email servers. This is only possible with some mobile providers depending on the mobile provider of the recipient. If the mobile provider has an email gateway where it accepts specially formatted emails and translates them to SMS notifications to their mobile customer, the SMS notification will be delivered [KB0712569]. Dynamic translations Using dynamic translation, email notifications are translated automatically for users based on their preferred language since Tokyo [Official Doc]. Email digests An email digest is a single email that summarises the activity for a target record during a specified time interval. This allows administrators to decrease the number of emails sent from instances [Documentation] [ServiceNow Dev Program Video | 6 min]. Subscription-based notifications Subscription-based notifications enable users to proactively subscribe to items that interest them and unsubscribe from messages that are not mandatory [Documentation]. For a detailed explanation on subscribable, mandatory & force delivery options, see this Community Article. 4. Related topics Quick overview: ServiceNow platform has the following additional capabilities for emails. Meeting invites The platform is able to send meeting invites which are email messages specially formatted according to the iCalendar specification [Documentation]. System address filters System address filters introduced in Paris allow an administrator to control which domains and/or addresses can communicate with an instance using email [Documentation]. S/MIME - signing and encrypting/decrypting emails Secure/Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (S/MIME) is an end-end encryption protocol for sending digitally signed and encrypted emails since Tokyo [Documentation] [ServiceNow Support Channel troubleshooting | 2 min].