Submitting Issues via Email

If incoming email is configured, both Agents and customers can submit Issues to the system via email.  Information can be included in the subject and body of a regular email or a form can be requested (see below). Each Project can have its own email address (support@mycompany.com, development@mycompany.com, etc.)

In addition to configuring an incoming email account for the Project, the Project Administrator must specifically allow Request and Issue creation through email.  Otherwise, only updates to Issues are allowed through the email interface.  This option is enabled by default.

To allow incoming email submission:

1. Select Administration | Project |Mail Preferences.
2. Under Incoming Email Submissions, check the boxes to allow customers and/or Agents to create Issues via email.

As an Agent, the following information can be included in an email to FootPrints.  Please check with your administrator for the correct address.

When Agents and administrators send email to the designated FootPrints account, the email becomes an Issue.  FootPrints detects that the user is an Agent/administrator by the email address and automatically assigns that user to the Issue.  Submissions by Agents/administrators are formatted the same way as incoming email from customers.  Refer to Customer Requests for more information on the formatting of emails.

• Subject—The subject of the email becomes the Title of the Issue.
• Body—The body of the email becomes the Description.
• Project fields—You must include data for all mandatory Project fields. If you email FootPrints without this information, you receive an error notification email with instructions on getting Project field information.  See below for the format.
• Address Book fields—You must include data for all mandatory Address Book fields. The format is described below.
• Email address—Your email address is recorded as the submitter of the Issue.  By default, the submitter is assigned to the Issue.  If auto assignment or escalation is configured, other users may be assigned by the system in addition to or instead of the submitter.  To designate a customer or other user as the submitter of the Issue, include the email address in the body of the email in the form: sender=jsmith@widget.com.
• Priority—The default priority is automatically assigned to all new email submissions.  To define a different priority, include the line Priority=X on a separate line in the body, where X is the priority.
• Status—By default, Issues submitted via email by Agents get a status of Open. To define a different status, include the line Status=X, where X is the status.
• Assignees—To define assignees, include the line Assignees=X, where X is the user ID of the assignee.  For complete details on using this function, refer to Updating Issues via Email.

To submit Project or Address Book field information:

1. In the body of the email, include a line for each Project field, Address Book field, Priority or Status field to be submitted.

The Project field data must be in the form:

fieldname=data

2.  For example, if the name of the field is Problem type, and the data is Software, then the line should be:

problem type=software

Note

By default, FootPrints assumes that the data is contained on one line only.  For multi-line data, the form is:

fieldname=data

data

data

END fieldname

To specify a value for a checkbox field, use the words specified for the checkbox, i.e., On and Off (which default to On and Off, but can be changed).  For example, if you have a field called Customer Satisfied and the checkbox values are Yes and No, to indicate that the checkbox is checked, include Customer Satisfied=Yes in the body of the email.

Data submitted to checkbox or multi-select fields is validated against the permitted data values for those fields; incoming emails are rejected if the data values are not in the list. example: the field 'Color' has values 'red', 'blue' and 'green' in the project. If the incoming email has a line of 'Color = black', this email will be rejected.

Multi-select fields with multiple values must be semi-colon delimited.  For example: 'Colors i like = red;green;blue'

3. By default, the Issue is entered into the default Project for incoming email or to the Project defined for that particular email account.  To submit an Issue to a different Project, the following line must be included in the subject of the email:

PROJ=n

where n is the Project number.  You can obtain the Project number by submitting the listprojects email query.

Note

When populating date and date/time fields in email, the field data should be provided according to the user's date format:  American, European, or ISO. If the user has not set a format for himself or herself, then the data should be provided in the format of the system default.  For date/time fields, enter the time in the form hh:mm.  That is, after the date is entered (e.g., 03/04/2006), leave a space and then enter the time (e.g., 03/04/2006 14:45).  When submitting a time via email, it is always submitted using a 24-hour clock.

Incoming email requests are checked for errors by FootPrints.  Data that is incorrectly formatted is not lost; it is added to the Description.  For example, if the name of a Project field is misspelled, that line is placed in the Description of the request.  FootPrints also checks for invalid data.  For example, if text is submitted for an integer type field, FootPrints does not create the request and replies to the user with an error message email.