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Matrix42 Self-Service Help Center

Service Desk global settings and E-Mail Robot

Overview

This page explains how to configure Matrix42 Service Desk basic settings and E-Mail Robot.

Service Desk Settings

To Configure Matrix42 Service Desk, go to Matrix42 Software Asset and Service Management → Service Desk application → click Settings in the navigation area:

  • Enable Tickets and Service Requests: click the Enable Tickets and Service Requests action to activate the Tickets and Service Requests in the Service Desk and Self Service Portal;
  • Edit settings: in the Global System Settings preview that appears, click the Edit toolbar button that opens the Global System Settings dialog. Choose the necessary tab to adjust settings according to your preference.

Functionality Settings

General

  • Default Span for Pausing Tickets (Days): tickets and other activities (incidents, problems, tasks) with the status "Paused" are automatically reactivated by the system after specified in this field number of days;
  • Send Mail Subject Template: manually entered default text, added to the e-mail as an e-mail subject prefix;
  • Do not allow users to re-open closed tickets: select this checkbox if users should not be able to reopen an already closed incident or any other activity (problem, ticket)  through the Matrix42 Self Service Portal. With this option enabled, the Self Service Portal users will have to create new tickets even if they want to report the same issue they had before. Closed tickets can be reopened from the Service Desk only;
  • Mark tickets as "New information received" when adding Journal entry: select the checkbox to enable the activity entry highlighting in bold when a new journal record is added;
  • Mark tickets as "New information received" when adding Journal entry by responsible person: the activity entry in the Service Desk is highlighted in bold only when a responsible user submits new journal entry;
  • Automatically apply the tightest Service Level Agreement when updating Activities:  enabled option skips the message about more suitable Service Level Agreement when updating Activities and applies the suggested Service Level Agreement automatically.

Knowledge Base Settings

  • Enable to create knowledge base article versions: select this checkbox to allow the creation of multiple versions of a knowledge base article in the system. If the checkbox is selected, each time when an article is edited, a user will be able to save it as a new version. Knowledgebase article versions are necessary to create reusable content;
  • Disable knowledge base article rating:  select this checkbox if the portal users should not have the possibility to rate knowledgebase articles on Matrix42 Self Service Portal. As a result, the Rate button and the average rating of articles will be hidden on the portal and the Knowledge Base Article dialog will not display the User Ratings page.
  • Enable knowledge base article comments in Self Service Portal: select the checkbox to enable the knowledgebase article comments area in the Self Service Portal. 
  • Allow sending KBA in custom language: selected checkbox allows choosing a custom language from the list of languages to which the article was translated. Click Send via E-Mail action and choose language from the drop-down list.

Ticket Settings

  • Hide assets from the Incident dialog if they have one of the following statuses:  assets with one of these statuses cannot be selected in the Incident properties dialog.
  • Hide users from the Incident dialog if they have one of the following statuses:  users with one of these statuses cannot be selected in the Incident properties dialog.
  • Prefill Asset when reporting Ticket: enabled check-box automatically pre-fills asset for the user who has only one asset assigned. For users with several assets or without any, the asset should be chosen and added to the activity manually. 
  • Disable Ticket rating: select this checkbox if the portal users should not have the possibility to rate the tickets and other activities (Incidents etc.) on Matrix42 Self Service Portal. As a result, the Rate button and the average rating of articles will be hidden on the portal and the Ticket dialog will not display the User Ratings page.
  • Enable automatic Ticket acceptance: the System automatically accepts all the Tickets (Incidents, Service Requests) created by Service Desk Agents (in the Service Desk application). When this option is disabled, all tickets submitted from the Service Desk are created on status new and assigned with "Accept" action;
  • Show relevant Knowledge Base Articles when reporting Tickets in Self Service Portal: relevant knowledgebase article is suggested when the Self Service Portal user is filling out the new ticket or incident form. The article is suggested when the summary text has keywords that match the keywords added in the General settings of the knowledge base article edit page.
  • Inherit Ticket ownership from User: if this option is enabled, the ownership information will be taken from the Ticket Initiator (field User), otherwise, it will be taken from the current user. This setting applies only to 'Ticket' and those classified as 'Incident' or 'Service Request'. It does not apply to 'Task', 'Problem' or 'Change Request'.
  • Inherit Task/Change/Problem ownership from User: if this option is enabled, the ownership information will be taken from the person selected in the User field  otherwise, it will be taken from the current user. The following rules apply:
    • If the option is enabled and the user is changed, the ownership is changed accordingly.
    • If the option is enabled and the User field gets cleared, current ownership is not changed.
    • If the option is enabled and no user is specified, the ownership is taken from the current user.
    • If the option becomes disabled, the ownership is not changed.

Changing the ownership while creating a task, change request or problem will be ignored and settings defined at service desk global system settings will be applied without prompting the user.

  • Close ticket when user response stays out: enable this option to automatically close the tickets (classified as incident or service request) with status "On Hold" and reason "Waiting for customer acceptance" after a particular number of days, which is set in the Maximum waiting time for user response on solved tickets (days) field.

To be able to use this setting, make sure that the maximum waiting time is less than the value set in the Default Span for Pausing Tickets (Days) field. Otherwise, the ticket will be reactivated instead of being closed. This happens because by default the maximum waiting time for user response is greater than the default span for pausing tickets. Another option to solve this is pausing a ticket for a longer period manually (by editing the Reminder Date field in the Pause action wizard). 

  • Maximum waiting time for user response on solved tickets (days): default 30.

Default Settings

Default Categories

Categories that are predefined when tickets and/or tasks are created:

  • Default Category for Tasks
  • Default Category for Tickets
  • Default Category for Problems
  • Default Category for Incidents
  • Default Category for Service Requests
  • Default Category for Changes

Default Roles

Roles that are predefined when tickets and/or tasks are created. Specify the role for each type of available activities:

  • Default Responsible Role for Tasks
  • Default Responsible Role for Tickets
  • Default Responsible Role for Problems
  • Default Responsible Role for Incidents
  • Default Responsible Role for Service Requests
  • Default Responsible Role for Changes

Default Templates

  • Default Change Template for Non-Standard Changes: default change template for automatic creation of changes that are requested through the Matrix42 Self Service Portal or via email.

Notifications

E-mail sending section contains sender addresses that are predefined if the Send e-mail action which is performed for tickets or tasks. The SMTP server should allow emails with these addresses to be sent from the mailbox that was set on the Emails dialog page of the Global System Settings in Administration. 

Sender e-mail is specified for each of the available activities in the corresponding fields:

  • Task-Related Sender
  • Sender Address for Tickets
  • Problem-Related Sender
  • Incident-Related Sender
  • Sender Address for Service Requests
  • Sender Address for Changes
  • Insert hyperlink to the Self Service Portal into incident-related emails: select this option if you want an automatic link to the corresponding incident on the Matrix42 Self Service Portal to be inserted into emails to customers.
  • Use links to UUX in Service Desk related e-mails: automatically generated links lead to a newer version of Matrix42 Software Asset & Service Management system with an improved user interface, conventionally called UUX.

For the e-mail generation conditions and e-mail related settings see also: 

Reaction point and related activities settings:

  • Notify when task reaction point is near (min):  default 15 
  • Notify when incident reaction point is near (min): default 15
  • Notify when ticket reaction point is near (min):  default 120
  • Notify when service request reaction point is near (min): default  120
  • Notify when problem reaction point is near (min): default  120
  • Notify when change request reaction point is near (min):  default 120

Solution point and related activities settings:

  • Notify when task solution point is near (min):  default 30
  • Notify when incident solution point is near (min): default 30
  • Notify when ticket solution point is near (min):  default 2880
  • Notify when service request solution point is near (min): default 2880
  • Notify when problem solution point is near (min): default  1440
  • Notify when change request solution point is near (min):  default 2880

E-Mail Robot Settings

The E-Mail Robot monitors mailboxes and, from the ticket IDs in the subject line, checks whether these tickets already exist in Matrix42 Service Desk for the specific case.

An important fact is that the E-Mail Robot itself does not apply any changes to processed E-Mails, like adding, changing, or removing HTML styles. In case this happens please check the overall system settings.

  • Removed styles - Change applied by platform-based HTML sanitizer to prevent malicious script execution
  • Processed E-Mail looks different - This might be caused by the style used with the platform-defined HTML literal control
  • Style of outing mails does change - This might be caused by the platform-based E-Mail-Engine, responsible for sending outbound E-Mail like those triggered by Compliance Rules
  • If a ticket does not exist: the E-Mail Robot creates a new ticket from the email, searches for the customer in the system by using the sender's address, and enters this address in the ticket. Attachments and embedded objects are saved in the ticket and can be viewed on the Attachments dialog page.
  • If a ticket already exists: the E-Mail Robot appends the email to the existing ticket, which can be viewed on the Journal dialog page, and informs the responsible person that a new email has been received. Attachments are saved in the ticket and can be viewed on the Attachments dialog page.

Processing Out-of-Office (OOO, alternatively: Out-of-Facility / OOF) e-mail messages: 

  • E-mail Robot adds e-mail message content as a Journal comment to all tickets of the type (Ticket, Incident, Problem) configured for the mailbox, have the sender user as related user. Related user is a creator, initiator, responsible person or a related user of the activity. If a mailbox is configured to create Knowledge Base Articles or no relevant tickets are found, then nothing is added or created, the message is ignored.

There is no standard definition of Out-of-Office e-mail message format. To categorize e-mail message as OoO message, E-mail Robot uses the commonly accepted rules based on e-mail content and technical data, mostly on combination of e-mail headers and their values.

Below are the currently used rules (as of Enterprise Service Management version 12.0.1), which combined lead to an e-mail message being categorized as Out-of-Office e-mail message:

  1. E-mail message has property Item Class with value "IPM.Note.Rules.OofTemplate.Microsoft" (Relevant only for older versions Microsoft Outlook. Not present in e-mail message headers, but saved as custom header when e-mail message is exported as EMR file);
  2. Header Return-Path is absent or has special empty value "<>" and one of the following:
    • Header Auto-Submitted has value "auto-replied",
    • Header X-Autorespond is present in the message,
    • Header X-Autoreply is present in the message,
    • Header Auto-Submitted has value "auto-generated" and header X-Auto-Response-Suppress has value "All";
  3. Header Return-Path contains actual reply e-mail address and:
    • Header Auto-Submitted has value "auto-replied" and header X-Autoreply is present in the message.

E-mail message headers can be examined in the e-mail source obtained by either saving a message as EML in Microsoft Outlook or other e-mail client application (might be modified by client application and differ from source received by E-mail Robot) or exporting directly from the server as EMR using EmailRobotTool.exe utility from Enterprise Service Management installation and opening saved file as plain text.

In case the e-mail message is found, which is an obvious Out-of-Office message, but not processed as such by E-mail Robot due to not conforming to the current detection rules, a proposal for detection rules adjustment can be filed.

Processing Non-Delivery Report (Non-Delivery Receipt) e-mail messages depends on whether there are tickets found by their IDs in the message subject:

  • If tickets are found: the E-mail Robot adds special comment about message delivery error to all tickets, which IDs are present in the e-mail message subject. Also, New Information Received flag is set for those tickets.
  • If tickets are not found: a new Incident is created with specific Subject and Description describing the e-mail delivery failure. Incident is created with the default category, but is assigned to the Enterprise Queue Profile configured for the mailbox.

E-mail robot has the following configurable properties:

  • Disable Mail Boxes automatically when connection fails for: set a number and choose the measuring unit from the next field.
  • Fails time unit: choose from the suggested options day(s), hours(s), minute(s).
  • Maximum allowed length for ticket description: defines the maximum length for ticket description. By default is set to 100000. The setting is available in Enterprise Service Management version 11.0.1 and higher.
  • Timeout for email download: defines the time-out value while downloading email. By default is 30 seconds. The setting is available in Enterprise Service Management version 11.0.1 and higher

Check-box options:

  • Enable E-mail Robot: select this check-box if you want to use the E-Mail Robot.
  • Use strict HTML sanitizer rules: selecting this option enables more strict rules of HTML sanitizer for e-mails being imported. This will prevent certain attack types, but also can lead to content misrepresentation of some e-mail messages with incorrect HTML markup in them.

Mail box settings

  1. Create a mail server by clicking Add under Mail boxes. An input wizard opens.

If mail servers are available only via a proxy server, then you should configure Internet Explorer for service account user to use this proxy server.

  1. In the Connection Type drop-down, select the used protocol (IMAP4, Exchange/On-Premise, Exchange/Office 365, or Exchange/Microsoft Graph). 

IMAP4 and Exchange/On-Premise options

Starting from Matrix42 Enterprise Service Management 10.1.1 Exchange/On-Premise requires at least Microsoft Exchange Server version 2013 SP1 

  • Server Name: name of the server where the mailbox is located.
  • Use SSL: select this option if the mail server supports SSL.
    In this case, for Server name enter the name of the server on which the SSL certificate was issued (for example, the fully qualified domain name).
  • E-mail Address: email address of the mailbox.
  • Account: user account with which you log on to the mail server.
  • Set/change Password: select this option to set or change a password.
  • Password: password with which you log on to the mail server.
  • Disable mailbox: select this option if you want to disable the mailbox.
  • Continue without establishing connection: select this option if you want to continue without establishing a connection to the mailbox.
    If connection fails, a Connection Log will be displayed.

Exchange/Office 365 and Exchange/Microsoft Graph options

These types of connection are available in Matrix42 Enterprise Service Management version 10.1.0 and higher.

  • Use Service Connection: if checked, E-mail Robot will use configured Service Connection to authenticate with Microsoft 365 Exchange. If Service Connection is not used, connection configuration must be provided in the mailbox settings.

Configuration of Service Connection and Azure Active Directory is described in the following article: E-mail Robot Tenant Configuration for Microsoft 365 Service Connection.

With Use Service Connection checked:

  • E-mail Address: email address of the mailbox.
  • Service Connection: service connection to be used for authentication.

With Use Service Connection unchecked:

  • Tenant ID: your company's ID on the Microsoft Azure portal.
  • Client ID and Client Secret: enter the values from the Microsoft Azure portal.
  • E-mail Address: email address of the mailbox.

Common configuration options:

  • Disable mailbox: select this option if you want to disable the mailbox.
  • Continue without establishing connection: select this option if you want to continue without establishing a connection to the mailbox.
    If connection fails, a Connection Log will be displayed.

Microsoft strongly suggests using Microsoft Graph over EWS for Exchange Online, so Microsoft Graph connection is recommended for accessing cloud Exchange mailboxes.

Now Microsoft Graph protocol does not support accessing Exchange public folders, so Exchange / Office365 connection must be used if you configure a mailbox which is a public folder.

  1. Click Continue Configuration.
  • Folder Type: type of folder from which the emails are read. This field is read-only for the IMAP4 and Exchange/On-Premise options.
  • Mail Folder: folder in the mailbox which the E-Mail Robot searches for emails. Default: Inbox.
    For the IMAP4 protocol, the folder name is context-sensitive.
  • Move to folder type: type of folder to which the processed emails are put. This field is read-only for the IMAP4 and Exchange/On-Premise options.
  • Move processed mails to folder: processed mails will be moved to the selected folder.
  • Ticket Type: ticket type that the E-Mail Robot uses for new tickets.
  • EQM Profile: select the Enterprise Queue.
  • Template: default template which should be used for ticket settings. Type of the template depends on the selected ticket type.
  • Category: category that the E-Mail Robot uses for new tickets.
  • Process auto-reply mails: if selected, the "auto-reply" mails will be processed and added to the ticket's journal.
    Processing of auto-reply mails implies adding a specific record to the journal of all the tickets which have the sender user as related. Creating a new ticket from an auto-reply mail is not intended. If the checkbox is empty, auto-reply emails will be ignored.
  • Process non-delivery reports: if selected, a journal entry about an undelivered email is added to tickets which have the recipient user as related. If the recipient user does not have tickets, a task is created for the default role.

If Out-of-Office or Non-Delivery Report E-mail Robot processing function is turned off, the messages remain unread in the inbox. We therefore recommend a manual rule of the Exchange Server to keep the directory clean and the system efficient (move NDR/OOO).

Below there are settings that were introduced in Matrix42 ESM version 11.0.1 and also integrated to version 10.1.1.

  • Mark ignored E-mails as read. This setting is relevant only if either the Process auto-reply mails or the Process non-delivery reports checkbox or both are empty. If you enable it, the system will change the status of not processed emails to "read".
  • Type of Folder to Move Ignored E-mails. This setting is relevant only if either the Process auto-reply mails or the Process non-delivery reports checkbox or both are empty. Type of folder to which the not processed emails are put.
  • Folder to Move Ignored E-mails This setting is relevant only if either the Process auto-reply mails or the Process non-delivery reports checkbox or both are empty. Select a folder into which the not processed emails will be moved.
  • E-mail Message Memoization: Allows saving processed message IDs to prevent messages from being processed repeatedly. In case when connection to the e-mail server is unstable and processed e-mails are not marked as read and/or moved to the Move to folder, this option can be used to avoid processing such messages multiple time and having duplicate tickets created. Saved IDs are used to detect already processed e-mail messages and prevent the system from processing them again.
    Possible values for this options are:
    • None: the option is disabled, no message IDs are saved. This is a default behavior and it copies the behavior before adding this option.
    • Only failed: IDs are saved only for the messages the system fails to move or mark as read. During the following activations system removes memoized IDs for the messages that are successfully marked as read and moved.
    • All: IDs are saved for all received messages. IDs are never removed from the memory.

This option is available starting from Matrix42 ESM version 12.0.

IDs of ignored messages (when Out-of-Office and Non-Delivery Reports are not processed) are not saved.

Saved IDs are cleared when Matrix42 Engine Common service is restarted (for all mailboxes) or when memoization option value is changed (for the mailbox which has option value changed). 

Enabling message ID memoizing decreases E-mail Robot performance and increases memory consumption.

Time Tracking

You can enable one of the Time Tracking options:

  • Manual Time Tracking allows adding and editing time tracking records per each activity manually;
  • Start Time Tracking wizard automatically suggests filling out working hours manually at the final stage of any ticket processing before closing the ticket.
  • Automatic Time tracking without user interaction keeps track of spent time, performed actions and types of activities automatically. Time tracking entries are generated on the go and recorded to the statistics according to the configured Time Tracking settings.  Click this option to enable automatic time tracking and proceed to the Automatic Time Tracking configuration guide.  

Field Service

Field Service tab is available for the additionally installed Field Service Management package. The following options are available:

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