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Parse Message Step

Siebel Email Response uses the following features to process email:

• Threading. Maintains an association with related messages that are sent between a customer and an organization.
• Parsing. Analyzes an email message to look for predefined, structured fields that are typically used to process Web-form email messages.

The Parse Message step in the eMail Response - Process Message workflow provides both of these features.

By default, this step parses an email message for the [THREAD ID: text. When that text is found, the workflow copies all the characters before the right bracket (]). These characters are stored in the Thread ID process property. The eMail Response - Process Message workflow uses the thread ID in the following functionality:

• In an agent's Communications views, the thread ID enables all messages with the same thread ID to appear in the History view.
• Messages that have a thread ID are treated as follow-up messages. Automatic responses are never sent in response to follow-up messages.

NOTE:  Spell check does not review misspelled words that appear after the [THREAD ID: tag.

An example of message threading follows:

• The customer sends a new incoming email message.

  From: customer@example.com
  To: customersupport@example.com
  Subject: Help

  Please help.

  - Customer

  NOTE:  A thread ID does not appear at the bottom of the message.

• The company sends a response to customer.

  From: customersupport@example.com
  To: customer@example.com
  Subject: RE: Help

  Attached is the answer to your question.

  - Support

  [THREAD ID:1234]

  NOTE:  A thread ID appears at the bottom of the response.

• The customer replies to the response with a follow-up question.

  From: customer@example.com
  To: customersupport@example.com
  Subject: RE: Help

  I already tried that. Any other ideas?

  - Customer

  -----Original Message-----
  From: customersupport@example.com
  To: customer@example.com
  Subject: RE: Help

  Attached is the answer to your question.

  - Support

  [THREAD ID:1234]

  NOTE:  A thread ID appears at the bottom of the response.

In this example, each message is associated with the same thread ID (1234). The Parse Message step identifies messages as part of the same thread by looking for the text [THREAD ID:1234]. Each of these messages appears in the History view on the Communications screen.

About Parsing for New Fields

In addition to the preconfigured capabilities of the Parse Message step, you can modify the step to identify additional fields in an email message. After these fields are extracted from a message, you can modify other steps in the workflow to use these values. One example is parsing an email message for a campaign code. In email marketing campaigns, a code is often included in the bottom of the email message so that agents can perform a marketing analysis. For information about parsing messages for campaign codes, see Parsing Message Text for the Campaign ID and Parsing Message Subjects for the Campaign ID. For information about the ParseText method and its input arguments, see Inbound Email Manager Business Service.

An example of an outgoing marketing message follows:

From: marketing@example.com
To: customer@example.com
Subject: Important marketing message

Please visit our Web site www.example.com for information about Siebel Email Response.

- Oracle Marketing

[CID:1234]

NOTE:  A campaign ID appears at the bottom of the email.

An example of a response to the marketing message that a customer might send follows:

From: customer@example.com
To: marketing@example.com
Subject: RE: Important marketing message

Please have a sales representative contact me. Thanks.

- Customer

-----Original Message-----
From: marketing@example.com
To: customer@example.com
Subject: Important marketing message

Please visit our Web site www.example.com for information about Siebel Email Response.

- Oracle Marketing

[CID:1234]

NOTE:  The campaign ID still appears at the bottom of the customer's inquiry.