Empty Target record on processed emails

The processed email records in the Received mailbox (System Mailboxes > Received) have an empty value in the Target field. The user does not know which record, or even if a record, was created or updated as a result of processing the email record.

Symptoms

• The email record has a state of Processed, but the Target field is empty.
• The email log shows that there is an inbound action that was skipped because it did not update or create a record.

All releases

When an inbound action processes an incoming email, it uses the variable current to represent the record that it affects.

If a new record is to be created, then-current represents a new empty record for the target table suitable for the population before an insert.

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//Sample inbound action script creates an incident record 

current.caller_id = gs.getUserID();
current.comments = "received from: " + email.origemail;
current.short_description = email.subject;

current.category = "request";
current.incident_state = 1;
current.notify = 2;
current.contact_type = "email";

current.insert(); //<--When line completes, it will update the target 
                  //   field on the email record with a reference to the created record                 

If an existing record is to be updated, then current represents a reference to the record that is to be updated.

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gs.include('validators');

if (current.getTableName() == "incident") {
    current.comments = "reply from: " + email.origemail;
    
    if (email.subject.toLowerCase().indexOf("please reopen") >= 0) {
        current.state = "2";
        current.work_notes = "Issue was not resolved";
    }

    current.update(); //<--When this line completes, it will update the Target field 
                     //on the email record with a reference to the updated record
}

If the script does not use variable current to update or create a record, the system does not know which record was affected and therefore is not able to fill in the Target field.

• Whenever possible, use the already-provided current to update or create the target record.
  Or:
• If this is not an option because the script updates a record that does not belong to the Target table, or if you update/create more than one record, then consider manually logging the changes made by your custom action using gs.log() as described in product documentation.

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var grIncident = new GlideRecord('incident');
grIncident.initialize();
grIncident.caller_id=gs.getUserID();
grIncident.comments = "received from: " + email.origemail;
grIncident.short_description = email.subject;
grIncident.insert();
//create log entry to know what created/update by this action
gs.log("<custom_action_name> Created Incident:" + grIncident.number, "EMAIL." + sys_email.sys_id);

        You should then be able to view the record that was created or updated in the email logs.