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Some email messages are not being turned into incidents
Answer ID 2100   |   Last Review Date 11/25/2019

Why aren't all of my email messages being turned into incidents?

Environment:

Incoming emails

Resolution:

Oracle B2C Service includes several features that allow you to prevent incidents from being created. This includes settings designed to prevent email loops, specifying email addresses from which incidents will not be created, and rules that prevent incidents from being created under specific conditions. Evaluate the options and features below to determine if these are in place to prevent incidents from being created.

Note: You can determine if an email was filtered using the standard report: "Incoming Email Filter Details" (report ID 227). This report is at the path: \Public Reports\Service\Email Reports.

Note: In addition to the features and settings listed below, if your mailbox is hosted by Oracle, emails may be filtered or quarantined based on how the spam filtering application is configured for the mailbox. For more information on how spam filtering may be applied to your hosted mailbox, refer to Answer 11713: Managing the new Spam Quarantine.

Configuration settings: The configuration settings included in the sections of this answer can be edited using the path below.

Path to setting(s): Select Configuration from the navigation area > Site Configuration > Configuration Settings > and search by Key.

Amount of Email from an Address is Restricted: You can set configuration settings to allow a specified number of emails from an address within a specific timeframe.

By default, the system will only accept 23 messages from a given email address in a 12 hour period. If you use the default settings, the 24th and subsequent emails from that address within the 12 hour span will be discarded and no response email will be sent from the system.

The EGW_MAX_PER_ADDRESS  setting specifies the maximum number of emails that will be accepted from an individual email address within the time period specified in the EGW_MAX_MSG_DURATION setting. This is used to identify and stop auto-responder email loops. Setting EGW_MAX_PER_ADDRESS to 0 disables the email loop detection. The default value is 23.

The EGW_MAX_MSG_DURATION  setting specifies the number of hours to determine if an email loop is occurring. We recommend the duration not be less than 8 hours or more than 24 hours. The default value is 12 hours.

For example, if EGW_MAX_PER_ADDRESS is set to 23, and 24 emails are received from the same address within the EGW_MAX_MSG_DURATION hours, the 24th email from that address will be discarded and no response email will be sent, thereby breaking the email loop. 

Important! If you use forms to submit information and create incidents within your Oracle B2C Service application, incidents created from the form are all associated to the same contact record. As a result, if the form is used more than 23 times in a 12 hour period (if using the default settings), then the 24th and higher submittals will be discarded and no response sent.

Therefore, if you are using forms within your answers, you should set the EGW_MAX_PER_ADDRESS value to be 0 to disable the loop protection.

Note: These configuration settings are set at the per interface level.  However, they function as the maximum per mailbox associated to the interface the configurations are set.

To help illustrate the 'per mailbox' functionality:
- If a contact is sending 25 emails to the same mailbox (mailbox_id 1) within 12 hours, only 23 incidents will be created and the last 2 messages will be discarded;
- If a contact is sending 33 emails to 3 different mailboxes (10 emails to mailbox_id 1, 11 emails to mailbox_id 2 and 12 emails to mailbox_id 3) 33 incidents will be created and no email will be discarded.

See also Configurations EGW_MAX_PER_ADDRESS and EGW_MAX_MSG_DURATION explained for more information.

Prevent Mailbox from Sending Email to Itself: The EGW_LOOP_PREVENT_ENABLED configuration setting allows you to prevent an Oracle hosted mailbox from sending messages to itself. When EGW_LOOP_PREVENT_ENABLED is enabled, any email where the reply-to email address matches the reply-to email address of any mailbox in Oracle B2C Service, it will be discarded and no incident will be created. In this way, the mailbox deletes any messages from itself, which can prevent continuous email loops. By default, this setting is enabled (set to Yes). 


Message is Determined to be a Duplicate: The EGW_DISCARD_DUPLICATE_ENABLED  configuration setting allows you to discard emails that are determined to be duplicates. If enabled, any email having the same date within four hours, to and from email address (i.e. Sent to the same mailbox from the same sender), subject, and body as an existing incident will be classified as a duplicate message and will be discarded. Default is enabled (Yes).

NOTE: Beginning in the May 2015 release, the file attachment name, type, and size is also considered when processing potential duplicate messages.  In this same version, the specific mailbox is now ignored as a true duplicate could be sent to multiple configured mailboxes.

Examples:
- Two messages with the same from, to, subject, content, and file attachment. This should cause duplicate to be discarded.
- Two messages with the same from, to, subject, content, but for the file attachment, name them identically but be sure the sizes vary (easiest with text or word files, make one very long). This should not be considered a duplicate and should create two incidents in the system.

Email Matches Discard Addresses List or Discard Subject or Body Criteria: Check to see if the email address from which the email was sent is listed in the Discard Addresses filter for the mailbox. If so, then all messages from that address are simply discarded without creating an incident. Typically, email addresses are added to the Discard Addresses filter if they have been identified as sources of spam or junk email.

To check the discard addresses list, access the mailbox from the Service Configuration menu > Communication Configuration > Mailboxes table. Right click on the mailbox name and select Edit. Click the Incoming Email tab and review the email addresses listed in the Discard Addresses filter. If necessary, remove the email address and click Save.

Similarly, if words or phrases are listed in the Discard Subject or Discard Body fields, emails may be discarded if they contain a matching text sequence in the corresponding field.

Important! Emails are discarded based on whether the content matches any of the text strings entered and function similar to regular expressions in business rules.

For example, if you include the entry "hat" as criteria to discard the email in either the Discard Subject or Discard Body fields, an email will be discarded if it has a longer word or words that have "hat" in them -- even if the word "hat" itself is not in the email. If the email includes chat, what, hatch, and so on, the email is discard. For this reason, it is best to include longer words or phrases when adding content to these discard fields. 


Review Business Rules: You can create a business rule to block returned messages so that the incident is not created. Review your business rules to see if any of the rules include the action "Do not create incident".

If there are rules in place that do not create incidents, consider disabling the rule to determine if the rule is deleting more email than was initially intended. Also, review the IF criteria in the rule to determine if that criteria is affecting more incoming email messages than was intended.

If you want to prevent incidents being created from reply email, use the following rule: IF Incident.Source equals Utilities -> Techmail - Outreach Mailbox
THEN Do Not Create Incident.

Note: When disabling a rule, be sure to activate your ruleset after disabling the rule.

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