This video introduces the features for communicating with users through email and notifications.
Linked time codes for these topics appear in the YouTube description for this video.
The system can take action in response to email messages from users…
…and send notifications, such as email or text messages, to users.
First let’s look at inbound email actions...
... actions that the system takes in response to messages from users.
When the system receives a message from a user...
... it can respond based on the contents of the message.
This lets users perform system functions by email...
... like creating or updating an incident or change request.
The system can take two types of actions in response to a user’s message.
It can make changes to a system table…
…or it can send the user an email message in reply.
Let’s look at an example.
Suppose Beth is having trouble running a report she needs.
She sends a brief email message to the system describing the problem.
It’s just an ordinary message; she doesn’t have to follow any special format.
In response, the system creates a new incident.
The system uses information in the message to populate fields in the new incident.
The sender’s name goes in the Caller field…
…and the subject line becomes the Short description.
As system administrator...
... you control what the system looks for in each message and the actions that the system takes in response.
The base system comes with predefined actions for creating or updating an incident or change request...
... replying on a live feed, and many more.
You can modify these actions and create new ones of your own.
For more information on configuring inbound email actions, refer to ServiceNow product documentation.
Now let’s look at notifications, such as email and text messages...
... that the system sends to users to inform them of system events.
Notifications are triggered by system events, such as changes to tables.
Whenever a record is created or updated, the system can send an email or text message to certain users to inform them of the change.
For example, if a user closes an incident...
... the system can send a message to the user who opened the incident to let her know it's been closed.
Remember Beth, who was having trouble running that report earlier?
When she created the incident, the system sent her a notification that the incident had been opened.
As system administrator, you control the changes that trigger notifications, as well as their content.
To see the notifications currently defined in the system, navigate to System Notification > Notifications.
The base system comes with a variety of notifications, and you can create new ones of your own.
To create a new one, click New.
To view or edit an existing one, click the name in the list.
Here’s the name of the notification…
…and the table it applies to.
The When to send tab shows the conditions that trigger the notification.
In this case, the Notification is sent whenever a record is updated…
…and conditions can be added to further refine when the Notifications will be sent...
... such as when the Incident state field is Closed.
Additional conditions can also be defined within a script.
The Who will receive tab shows who’ll get this notification.
You can send to individual users…
…and to groups.
And here’s a handy trick:
The Users/Groups in fields icon lets you send notifications to users or groups referenced in the record that triggers the notification.
For example, selecting Caller will send the notification to the main email address of the user who reported the Incident.
You can also expand a user field, such as Caller...
... to specify a different email address, like the user’s personal address or the user’s manager’s address.
Any field on the User table for the caller specified would be available to select.
When we gather information from a series of tables by expanding referenced fields, we call this Dot-Walking.
If you do not want to specify notification recipients and want to let users proactively subscribe...
... you can make the notification Subscribable.
Users can set their notification subscription preferences in System Settings.
Different channels, such as email and text, can be created for receiving notifications.
Notifications are organized by category...
… click a category to view its Notifications...
…and click a Notification to identify its subscription preferences.
The What it will contain tab shows the content of the notification.
You can specify an email template to use a predefined message…
…or you can type a subject line and message of your own.
You can customize the message by adding information from the record that triggered the notification.
Here the subject line will include the incident number when the notification is sent.
In the Select variables pane, you can choose field values from the record to include within the message.
We’ll see how to do this in a moment.
You can also customize the content of the message using a script.
You can see those scripts by selecting Show Notification Scripts.
For example, this one provides the closed by and closed notes for the incident.
To preview how the Notification will appear to the user, click Preview Notification.
Here you can see the Subject and Body with field values substituted based on the Preview Record selected.
Looks good, but we’d like to add a greeting for the caller here at the top of the message.
Let’s see how to do that using the Select Variables pane.
We add the greeting...
... click the Caller variable in the list to add it to the message field...
…and take out this text.
To get a variable into the Subject field, you can cut and paste, or copy and paste.
Now let’s see how it looks.
That’s perfect!
For the last step, we update the record, and our notification is ready to go.
For more information, see our product documentation, knowledge base, or podcast.
Or ask a question in the ServiceNow Community.