Email Connector FAQ

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FAQ > Email Connector FAQ

Getting Started

Advanced Use


What is the difference between the "Public Email Address" and the "Internal Support Email address"?

The internal support email address is your main support mailbox which you use in order to manage email threads with your customers. This mailbox should be constantly reviewed by your support team and is used for the following purposes:

  1. Standard Email threads - Standard one-on-one email threads with customers which relate to existing Tickets will be automatically forwarded to this email address, so that you can continue the conversation on the same thread.
  2. Unrecognized emails - Unrecognized emails from new customers not yet in the CommitCRM database will be forwarded to this address (and no Ticket will be created).
  3. Error Handling - Emails which could not be processed due to errors during the process (such as the wrong format in XML formatted emails) will be forwarded to this mailbox.

Make sure not to use the same email address for the "Public Email Address" and the "Internal Support Team Email Address." Also, make sure that emails sent to the Public Email address and the Internal Support Email address do not end up in the same physical mailbox (i.e. that they are not synonyms/aliases for the same mailbox).


How does the Email Connector associate Emails with CommitCRM Accounts?

The Email to Ticket feature finds the CommitCRM Account which matches the "From" address of the incoming email, and then opens a new Ticket in CommitCRM, and links it to the Account. Matching the email address is performed on the Email1 and Email2 fields of the Account, and also on the email fields of secondary contacts of the Account.

Note that the matching is performed based on the full email address of the Account, not on the domain name alone. This is because clients may be using generic email addresses (such as Yahoo®, Gmail®, etc.) and the system cannot rely on the domain name itself. If one of your clients has many possible email addresses, you should add each as a secondary contact record (in the Account Contacts tab). This has the added benefit of ensuring that your CommitCRM Contacts are more complete.

When using the Automated Emails feature, you to define a set of rules that will help the system detect automated incoming emails which contain information about specific customers, and create Tickets for them. You can read more about this feature in the Commit Email Connector Setup Guide, under Email Processing Settings > Automated Emails & MSP Integration.


What happens when the "From" address cannot be matched?

If the "From" address was not found in the CommitCRM database, the email will only be forwarded to the Internal Support Email, with and no Ticket will be created.


When a customer sends in an email and a ticket is generated, how do we alert the technicians and the customer that a new ticket was created?

When a new Ticket is created out of an email, you can set Email Connector to send an automatic response back to the customer, notifying them that a Ticket was opened out of their email. When you configure this in the ServerConfig, you can also define a BCC address for keeping track of these emails. In the BCC address you can set your Internal Support email, and this way you can receive each notification as an email.


How does the system handle email threads that originated from an automated response for new Tickets? How does it make sure not to open another new Ticket?

The system identifies incoming emails related to already existing Tickets and forwards them to the Internal Support Team Email for manual handling. Identifying an already existing Ticket is performed in two phases:

  1. Identify that the source of the email is a valid Account in your system.
  2. Identify the Ticket number in the email subject and forward this message without opening a new Ticket for it.
    Note: If the Ticket number in the email subject was not found in the CommitCRM database, the email will still be forwarded, with an error indicating that this ticket was not found.


Why do attached emails only open in Outlook Express?

CommitCRM stores the incoming emails used for creating new Tickets in the folder that was selected during the setup phase (set by running the ServerConfig.exe utility). The email is stored in the exact form it was received from the mail server, without any modifications to it. Apparently, Outlook Express is able to work with native formatted email message files (.eml) and knows how to parse and display them (there may be additional email applications that can handle this). However, MS-Outlook (the email client included with MS-Office) uses a proprietary file format (.msg) which is also related to the format used by Microsoft Exchange. Other email clients cannot view these emails.

Note that the first time you open an .eml file you may be prompted to set up Outlook Express. Click Cancel, and the files will be opened anyways.


If I already set up other Commit Server modules (such as the Alerts Server), do I need to configure the outgoing email settings again?

All Commit Server modules use the same outgoing email services, and use the same configuration program (ServerConfig.exe). If you already defined the Outgoing Email configuration, you do not need to define it again. The Email Connector server will use the same definitions.


Can I integrate with MSP systems using the Email Connector?

Yes, using the Automated Email feature in CommitCRM allows you to process incoming emails from automated sources, such as an MSP alerting application, and analyze the email's header/body in order to create the relevant Tickets in CommitCRM.

You can read more about this feature in the Commit Email Connector Setup Guide, under Email Processing Settings > Automated Emails & MSP Integration.


What can I do with the Automated Emails Part in the Email Connector?

The Automated Email feature in CommitCRM processes incoming emails from automated sources, such as an MSP alerting application, and analyzes the email's header/body in order to create the relevant Tickets in CommitCRM.

This feature allows you to define a set of rules which will be activated one after the other to help the system detect pre-defined email formats, and create Tickets for them. Automated emails do not necessarily originate from a customer's email address, and the system can learn how to determine the customer for whom a new Ticket should be opened.

The Automated Email feature allows you to define a set of rules that will help the system detect automated incoming emails which contain information about specific customers, and create Tickets for them.

You can read more about this feature in the Commit Email Connector Setup Guide, under Email Processing Settings > Automated Emails & MSP Integration.


Can I use other editions of Microsoft Outlook to load .EML files?

Contributed by: AscendNet.
Yes. The default program associated with loading .EML files is Outlook Express; however, since most customers are more comfortable with using other editions of Microsoft Outlook, the following information has been made public allowing you to unlock the .EML file association, by editing a registry key. The registry key can be edited automatically by double clicking any of the .key files supplied in the tutorial.

Please note that we do not support this registry hack; however, we understand that most of our users are interested in this once they've become more familiar with the Email Connector. Using any of the methods in the following link as well as performing any registry editing should not be done lightly, and therefore obtaining and using the information in the following external link is done at your own risk.


How can my customers sign themselves up for support in CommitCRM?

Using the Commit Email Connector’s advanced processing features, you can have your own web pages submit XML transactions to the CommitCRM system over email, which in turn can cause the CommitCRM database to add a new account, using the steps documented in this knowledge base article.


See Also

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