The Mail Rules feature is an optional add-on for Mail Triage. It allows for the automatic creation of cases from incoming emails. It is particularly useful for business that handle high volumes of incoming mail.

Emails can be filtered on the following elements:

Filtered emails will then be matched to a customer record via one of the following elements:

Mail rules are configured from Settings - Mail Rules.

Here you can view and edit any existing rules.

You can also create a New Mail Routing Rule or view the Mail Rules Log. The latter option acts as a history of mail routing operations.

This section details the creation of a new mail rule.

Click on the New Mail Routing Rule button in the Mail Rules area of Settings. The New Mail Routing Rule screen is shown below. Depending on selections you make, more options will become available.

These fields are common to all rules:

Enter a name for this mail rule.

There are three options here, covering the three operations that a mail rule can perform.

All rules are given a sequence number. An incoming email will be evaluated against each rule in order, until it satisfies the requirements of one of them. Entering a sequence number lets you determine the order in which rules will be checked.

Select a token that will be used to perform the case creation. The associated user account will show in audit history.

The fields in the Matching section apply to all mail rules, though none of the fields are mandatory.

If an email matches all of the selections made, it will qualify for case creation, as long as a customer match can be made in the subsequent section.

If you have multiple mailboxes connected to The Layer, these will appear in the drop-down. You can filter here if you want a mail rule to only apply to specific ones.

This field lets you filter on the originating address for the email. By default, this can be a partial address. For example, you could enter @businessname.com to pick up emails from a specific customer or automated service.

The Exact Match checkbox lets you check for exact address matches instead.

This field lets you filter on the address to which the email was sent - for example, this could be a support inbox address.

This fields lets you specify a string that must appear in the subject for the mail rule to be actioned. This can be a partial match e.g. "error", "help".

This fields lets you specify a string that must appear in the body for the mail rule to be actioned. This can also be a partial match.

This fields lets you specify a string that must appear in the email header for the mail rule to be actioned. This can also be a partial match.

For Case Create type rules, you must set a Case Category and Case Sub-Category for the case that will be created.

The following settings are required in order to identify the case that will be closed.

Currently, only Field is supported. This must be selected.

With this option, a string can be supplied within the email, and matched to existing case subjects in The Layer.

With this option, a string can be supplied within the email, and matched to existing case descriptions in The Layer.

With this option, a case reference will be supplied within the email subject and matched to existing case references in The Layer. Any open cases found will be closed.

Tags let you identify the string from the email that will be used to identify the case to be closed. See this section for more details.

For a case to be created from an email, we must be able to identify which customer the case should be raised against.

This can be done by matching email content to either customer contact data or asset data.

For example, we might match the sender's address to a customer contact. Alternatively, we might take an asset serial number from the email subject and match this to a customer asset.

For each mail rule you must populate either the Asset Matching or Contact Matching section.

The following fields are available for asset matching:

Here you will choose whether you'd like to match to an asset core Field or Custom Field.

Here you must choose between which set of data you wish to match against - Customer Products or Customer Services.

Here you will choose the asset field that you want to match against.

This field lets you determine whether you'd like to pull the match string from the email Subject or Mail Body.

Tags let you identify the string from the email that will be used to identify the case to be closed. See the next section for more details.

By default, new cases will be assigned to the first Primary contact found on a customer record. However, this checkbox lets you send the email sender as the case contact.

Depending on the expected format of your incoming emails, you may wish to set Start and End Tags.

These are used to indicate where the match string appears in the email. For example:

Here you can see three separate examples of potential start and end tags in green, with the match string contained within.

If your mail rule is designed to handle emails that come in a predictable and consistent format, such as status reports coming from an external service, you may be able to identify suitable start and end tags, similar to these examples.

If you set a start tag but do not enter an end tag, the mail rule will use the end of the identified line as the end tag.

For example:

In this case, the end of the line will be used as the end tag.

The following fields are available if you are matching by customer contact:

Here you will choose whether you'd like to match to a contact core Field or Custom Field.

Here you will choose the contact field that you want to match against - Person Email, Person Mobile, Person Work Telephone, or Person Full Name.

This field lets you determine which component of the email will be used as the match string - the Subject, or the From address.

If you select Subject, you can set Start and End Tags to indicate where the match string will come from.

When a case creation rule is executed:

If you have enabled contact matching, the case contact will be the one that was used for matching.

If the mail rule instead used asset matching, the contact assignment logic is as follows:

Primary status can be enabled against a contact from the Contacts tab.

When a case has been created via asset matching, the asset will be attached to the case.

Attached assets can be seen on the Affected Assets tab of a case.

The Mail Rules Log lets you see which mail rules are being checked, and also which are being run successfully.

Possible messages:

To access the Mail Rules Log, click on the button in the left-side panel of the Mail Routing Rules config.

Can I create a mail rule that does not assign the case to a specific customer?

Cases in The Layer are always linked to a customer record. For this reason, you cannot create a case with a mail rule if it does not pertain to a specific customer.

We suggest using the Mail Triage app to handle incoming email queries that may not pertain to a specific customer.