Rejecting Ad-Hoc Support Requests Sent to ServiceDesk Plus by Email

In some environments having a support email account that users can simply email their requests can be a real headache. You tend to get all sorts of random requests and it is a real drain on the technicians to classify and find the ‘real’ issues. 

In some situations it would be preferable to have end users log their request via the self-service portal but have all subsequent communications regarding a valid Request by email. So how do you keep the advantages of being able to use the email features associated with ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus but stop those random requests arriving directly from the end users by email?

The key feature we need is the Spam Filter settings under Admin Tab->Mail Settings:

The Spam Filter allows us to define match criteria for incoming emails – if the emails match the filter criteria ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus will simply drop these emails and not create a Request from them.

Now if we select our filter rules carefully we can stop any ad-hoc emails being received but continue to receive valid email responses from end users to Requests already in ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus. To do this we’re going to look for the unique reference that is used by ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus to automatically merge email responses to an existing Request.

Now emails that are sent from a Request, and hopefully by default their responses (most users don’t tend to alter a subject line but just hit reply), will include the default text of ‘##<Request ID>##’ in the subject line. We can, therefore, use this as part of our Spam Filter settings along with the appropriate inbound email account we are trying to reject ad-hoc emails, in this example ‘support@set3solutions.co.uk’:

Cool huh? All the inbound emails are dropped unless they are a valid response to an email sent from a Request In ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus!

What’s more this will still work if you have multi-department usage of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus where Support Groups for the other departments are defined with appropriate email aliases, The example below shows a the email alias settings for a Group Procurement Support Group (note – an email forward must be in place to send these emails to the default email account used by ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus):

If you wanted the same reject option for Group Procurement as well as for IT Support just add their email alias to the Spam Filter rule:

Enjoy!

* Note: In the very latest versions of ManageEngine ServiceDesk Plus there is a new global option to disable the generation of Requests from incoming email but still have email conversations added:

However, if you have an older build, or require the split mode of operation for multiple departments, you’ll need to follow the details of the post.

Cheers!