Overview

The following KB provides information around behavior where a non-user responds to an email where there is an inbound email action that performs a specific action.

The expected behavior is that the email response will update the corresponding record. However, by default the transaction will not get processed.

Symptoms

• A user, who does not exist in the platform, responds to an email and expects a Facilities record to be updated. However, no update occurs.
• An admin user checks the email log and sees the following message: "Unable to locate facilities_request 1ca10935db596f000a845099dc961927 for inbound email processing”.

Cause

By default, any transaction made against a ServiceNow instance requires there to be an active user for that transaction.

Since the user does not exist in the instance, the transaction is not processed.

Resolution

To remediate the issue, perform the 3 following steps:

1. Modify the Business Rule to allow non-users to have write permission to Facility records (can also disable the Business Rule too). 

https://INSTANCE.service-now.com/sys_script.do?sys_id=43524ed1df203100dca6a5f59bf26317

2. Create a write ACL on facilities_request table for the field that the email is supposed to update.

3. Create a write ACL on facilities_request_task for the field that the email is supposed to update.