Unstructured and Structured Email

Automated Mail Processing and Routing

When an email arrives, the ERMS system performs some automated action on it or routes it to a proper group worklist depending on the information provided in the email.

The ERMS system routes an unstructured email to a relevant group worklist based on the information provided in the email. Information used in the evaluation process includes:

• A thread ID that is embedded in the email body.

  If you license PeopleSoft Multichannel Communications, all emails sent from the PeopleSoft system include a thread ID, also known as a context tag If a customer replies to such an email, and if the context ID appears in the reply, the system uses that ID to route the new email to the group worklist associated with the original email or its sender.

• The email address or domain from which the email was sent.

  You can define system-wide settings to ensure that emails from specific addresses or domains are handled appropriately. For example, you might configure the system so that it routes all emails from the domain ImportantCustomer.com to a worklist for priority customers.

• The email content.

  You can set up keywords, and the system scores each email based on occurrences of those keywords within the email subject and body. You associate different worklists with different sets of keywords so that the system can calculate a score for each of those worklists and route the email to the one with the highest score.

• The sender of the email.

  The system attempts to associate each inbound email with a business object ID by comparing the sender's email address to email addresses of customers and workers in the system. If there is a match, the routing process calls your custom code, which performs the customer-based routing. PeopleSoft does not deliver any customer-based routing processing, only the infrastructure for plugging in the custom code.

Each mailbox is associated with a default group worklist. An email is routed to the default group worklist under these situations:

• None of the routing processes returns a valid group worklist to which the email can be sent.

• The email is oversized (and therefore cannot be analyzed).

• The mailbox to which the email belongs is set up to not perform automatic routing.

Email Management and Worklist Integration

Only an agent who has accepted ownership of an email can modify or reply to the email. Email can be reassigned as many times as necessary. Emails are assigned to individuals only when the individual accepts ownership (either explicitly or because the system forces auto-acceptance of emails that agents view). All other assignment operations involve assignment to a group worklist.

ERMS is tightly integrated with PeopleSoft CRM worklists. When a group member accepts ownership of an email, the system moves the corresponding worklist entry from the group worklist to the individual's worklist. Similarly, if an email is sent to a group worklist (the original worklist or any other one), the system moves the corresponding worklist entry to that group worklist. Users cannot mark the worklist entries complete until the corresponding email has been closed.

Every inbound email has a status; you can track which emails require work and which are complete. Until an email is closed, an agent who accepts ownership of an email can:

• Review the email and access additional customer information by opening the 360-Degree View directly from the email workspace.

• Modify email information, such as the email contact, the email's parent in a thread, the email subject, and the email status.

• Create and remove relationships between the email and other transactions.

• Write a reply, optionally using a predefined correspondence template as the basis for the email text.