Some EMail support tickets are not being picked up by Boss

[RRundell]

We are on version 4.0.305 of Boss and version 2.0.63.0 of the Site Agent.

Some of our end user's submitted support email tickets are not being picked up by the Boss application. We think we have tracked down the issue and have been able to replicate the problem (see steps below).

1. An end user ( User A ) gets an email from ( User B )
2. ( User A ) selects Reply ( at which point Outlook adds the "RE: " prefix to the subject line.
3. ( User A ) adds the Boss Support Email address as they want it to also be sent to our IT support team
4. ( User A ) clicks send.

In this situation, the support ticket is new ( Support Ticket does not exist in the Boss application prior to the email being sent ). We see the email going into the Boss IT Support email mailbox, however it does not get picked up by the Boss Application. We have done some testing and it appears to be an issue with the "RE: " in the beginning part of the subject line and it not being a reply to an existing support ticket.

In examining the email flow, it appears the Boss application is reading the message, it just is not creating the support ticket. We have missed getting a few support tickets due to this issue / bug.

Please let me know if ( or when ) there is a fix to this issue.

Side Note:
Did the same process with the Forwarding an email option instead of reply and the forwarding option works correctly. The forwarding did create a support ticket in the Boss application.

[krisg]

This is due to the RE is looking for the ticket id to update the ticket. Not a bug per se as we are adding notes to the tickets if they reply. I will talk with development about this and see what can be done.

[RRundell]

My suggestion would be for development to add some additional logic (see below).

Support Ticket Email comes in.......

Is the EMail from a valid user? ( From Boss's Users list )
If No ( Not a Valid EMail User ), Do not process the email - Most likely junk mail
If Yes ( Valid EMail User ), proceed to next question.

Does support ticket exist?
If Yes ( Ticket Exists ), proceed to next question.
If No ( Ticket Does Not Exist ), Create a new support ticket.

Is the support ticket closed?
If No ( Support Ticket Not Closed ) - Update support ticket with eMail information
If Yes ( Ticket Closed ) - send reply to sender indicating the support ticket is currently closed or depending on if end users can add comments to closed tickets ( update the support ticket with eMail information )

Basically, handle the reply ("RE:" prefix) the same way you are handling the forwarding ("FW:" prefix).

[RRundell]

The only other option I can think of would be to have the "RE:" support ticket emails (that would be dropped) sent to a specific email address to be reviewed by one of the technicians. Anything would be better then dropping the support email ticket because the end users have no idea that the support ticket they submitted is not being reviewed/handled and the Technical support staff have no idea that the end user submitted a support ticket.

As you can see this can get very confusing and can have severe consequences depending on the urgency of the submitted support ticket.

[krisg]

Allowing the RE to create tickets will be added in the coming weeks.

[RRundell]

We applied the provided patches and our tests show that it has fixed the dropping of support tickets issue.

Thank you for addressing this issue quickly.

[mdecker]

It looks like there is a side-effect to this. If a user emails a support ticket and cc's other interested parties, a ticket is created. The other parties do a reply all to the original email and a new ticket is created for the same issue. I've had 4 or 5 tickets created for a single issue. I'm going in and copying any useful comments from them into the first ticket and deleting the others (usually the first ticket is the main requester). I've tried to help slow this down by appending (#IN-xxxxxx), mimicking the BOSS generated format to link replies to a ticket, but this sometimes creates a new ticket as well.

Any advice/ideas?

[RRundell]

We have not run into the side-effect you mentioned (Knocking on Wood! ). Our staff don't reply (with the Support email address still in place). After the ticket is grabbed, we may or may not add the Carbon folks to the support ticket as watchers. They would get notified and if needed reply to the watcher notification email.

Unfortunately, I think this is going to come down to training of the end users.

[mdecker]

Yes - training the users. They have been encouraged to create tickets online instead of via email, but sometimes they want a group of people knowing the ticket has been submitted so they email support and cc the group. I can set up watchers on the ticket but by that time there may already have been a flurry of replies and now several tickets created. Previously, when BOSS didn't create tickets for RE or FW, we just edited the email and marked it as reread to get it picked up if necessary or copied the text into the ticket if there was already a ticket in place.

It does tend to be a small group of 'repeat offenders' so I'll focus on a solution for them. I can see equal reason to want tickets created from RE or FW email.

[RRundell]

One of our initial requests was to allow a routing rule to add watchers which in turn would send email to others ( Non-Techs ) when a ticket comes in which may also address your needs. We requested this because we have some departments ( management personnel ) who want to be added to the watcher list if any of their staff submit a support ticket ( That way they are in the loop on any issues ).

This feature is coming (from what I have been told) but no date as to when it would be available. Currently, we ( technicians ) are having to track who wants to be added as a watcher and to manually added them to the support ticket watcher list.

[mdecker]

We have some departments where that would work well. I'll keep an eye out. Thanks for the information.