Module: Mail Import

Patrick Mackaaij is the team leader of one of our consultancy teams. When visiting clients, he noticed that many of them could get more out their TOPdesk application. Putting the free Mail import module to use is a good example, as it can save you a lot of time. The only investment is one hour of installation time.

TEXT: PATRICK MACKAAIJ

In practice, you would probably prefer that end users log their incidents using the Self Service Desk module. Often enough this does not happen and incidents come in through email. Unfortunately, copying these incidents into TOPdesk takes a lot of time. These are the actions you would take in such a case: 1. Open the (department) mailbox; 2. Decide whether the email message is an incident; 3. If this is the case, create a new incident in TOPdesk; 4. Enter the caller; 5. Select the email option at 'Entry'; 6. Copy the text from the email; 7. Paste the text in the request field in TOPdesk; 8. Finally, save the incident card in TOPdesk.

If the email message contains attachments, you must take the following steps for every attachment: 9. Save the attachment, for example, on your desktop; 10. Open the Notes tab in TOPdesk; 11. Click on the Upload button; 12. Finally, search for the attachment and send it to TOPdesk. You can process these email messages faster and more efficiently in TOPdesk with the Mail import module; only the first two steps of the process remain. If you decide to treat the email as an incident in step two, you should drag the message to a subfolder with, for example, the name 'To TOPdesk'. If you wish to import all email messages in your inbox as

incidents in TOPdesk, you do not have to create a subfolder. If the mailbox is spam free and does not contain messages you do not wish to import, you can use the Mail import module to automate the process. Tip: TOPdesk can insert more details, such as a standard operator. When using TOPdesk 4 Enterprise, you can even import emails from multiple mailboxes.

Setting up the Mail import module

The Mail import module is a standard accessory in TOPdesk 4. In your role as supervisor, you can use the Settings menu to setup the module through the web interface. TOPdesk 3 also contains the Mail import module. In order to use

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the module, you must have the web interface at your disposal. In the past, TOPdesk did not always include the required license file 'mailimportservice.license'. If this file is absent in your license files, TOPdesk Support can generate the license file for you. For this, you will need to log an incident via TOPdesk Extranet, with which you upload one of the other license files from the web interface. You can set up the Mail import module via the console of the TOPdesk ApplicationServer. TOPdesk has based the development of the Mail import module on the generic protocol IMAP. This enables the import of email messages from the Microsoft Exchange Server, but also from, for example, Novell Groupwise or Lotus Domino. TOPdesk does not, however, have any expertise regarding these mail servers. You can contact TOPdesk Support with your functional questions or ideas.

Tip: TOPdesk displays error messages in the 'log' folder of the TOPdesk ApplicationServer. If changing the settings does not have any effect, you can find possible error messages from the mail server there. Using telnet, you can test a basic connection even faster by opening a mail server connection from within TOPdesk. IMAP traffic runs by default via port 143. When the mail server responds, you can test your login data with the following command: ? login ,username> <password> Further information can be found on the Microsoft website: http://support.microsoft.com/ default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;189326

you can set up the textual content of outgoing email messages with TOPdesk settings management. You can even choose to use a specific text for incidents that have not yet been logged via the Self Service Desk. It is important that the TOPdesk Application manager chooses an Event on Time taken (one minute after date/time of creation by the mail import) and an Event for creating a Card. As an example, our client, ActiVite, uses the following text: With the TOPdesk Self Service Desk you can log your calls 7 days a week, 24 hours a day. You can also use the Self Service Desk to follow the progress of your call(s), respond to calls and inform your colleagues about (the status of) a call. In the TOPdesk Self Service Desk, you will also find a Knowledge base which contains user instructions, FAQs and useful tips.

Draw your end users attention to the Self Service Desk

Every outgoing email offers you the opportunity of bringing the Self Service Desk to the attention of an end user. In your role as supervisor,

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