How can I detect and prevent email loops?

You can prevent your service application from creating additional service requests (SRs) when there's an out-of-office reply from one of the recipients of the email.

For outbound SR emails, the recommended best practice is to have your administrator set the From address to a no-reply option, such as [e-mail]. This way, even if one or more recipients have their out-of-office notification turned on, the out-of-office reply isn't received by your service application. So a new SR isn't created.

But let's say your administrator sets the From address to your Support email account. This could cause an infinite loop of emails and new SRs. That's because a new SR sends an automatic acknowledgment email, which would trigger an out-of-office reply. This reply would in turn trigger the creation of another new SR, and so on.

Your business requirements may not permit the use of a no-reply email address, and you may use your Support email account instead. To accommodate this requirement, the following profile options are provided to detect and prevent the creation of infinite email loops:

• SVC_INBOUND_ACK_EMAIL_LIMIT_PER_USER

• SVC_INBOUND_ACK_EMAIL_TIME_INTERVAL

• SVC_INBOUND_EMAIL_PATTERN_TO_STOP_ACK

You can configure these profile options and set the values based on your company's requirement. For more information, see Configure Profile Options for Inbound and Outbound Email.