Can I have a Process send out an email as one of the steps?

Question

I have several processes to manage work flow in my Kace appliance and have the need to send an email to a specific distribution list as one of the steps. Can this be done with limited administration? I already have the dist-lists but just need to send an email to them as part of the workflow.

Thanks for the assistance

Answer

You can send an email as part of any ticket rule on your K1000, by ticking the box "Email all recipient in query list" within the ticket rule. You can then format the email as you want but using variables from within the select statement of the rule. But you probably knew that right?

So for example in a default ticket rule created from the wizard you see the following lines

select HD_TICKET.*,
HD_STATUS.NAME AS STATUS_NAME,
HD_STATUS.ORDINAL as STATUS_ORDINAL,
HD_IMPACT.ORDINAL as IMPACT_ORDINAL,

U2.EMAIL as SUBMITTER_EMAIL,

Which means within your email area you could use the variable $status_name within your email text, or SUBMITTER_EMAIL as a variable in the "Column containing email address" box.

However if you want to send the email to a regular list or person this can be more challenging as the email address data is maybe not associated within the ticket data.

In those situations we use a technique, when configuring service desk queues, of hiding the email addresses we want to use, that way we always have the data available in the ticket rule.

So select a free custom field or create a new one within your Queue Customise fields and layout area.

For example Custom_7

Then in the Custom field area enter the emails that you want to send to, in a comma separated form, into the default value area, so every ticket has that data but it is hidden from view

You will then need to add the HD_TICKET.CUSTOM_FIELD_VALUE6 field to your select statement

select HD_TICKET.*,
HD_STATUS.NAME AS STATUS_NAME,

HD_TICKET.CUSTOM_FIELD_VALUE6 as EMAIL_LIST,
HD_STATUS.ORDINAL as STATUS_ORDINAL,
HD_IMPACT.ORDINAL as IMPACT_ORDINAL,

But in your ticket rule you will now be able to put EMAIL_LIST as a variable in the "Column containing email address" box and the rule will send the email out to the list of emails you stored in the custom field.

Answer

This could in theory be accomplished with a ticket rule. It really depends on what specifically you are trying to do.

For example, if you need it to email a distribution group once one of the tickets in your process has been closed, you can set up a rule to check for this and send out the email.

Answer

I don't believe you can kick off a process with an email. What you would probably want to do it teach your HR staff to use the KACE system to put in a ticket (process) instead of sending an email. That way they kick off the process when someone gets hired/fired.

I implemented the process to my HR team so that instead of emailing us when someone comes or goes they open a kace process. This automatically creates tickets for the couple of teams we have to enable/disable access to the various systems. It also lets the HR team see the progress of the tickets.