Incoming email rules
In short: With incoming email rules, you let aishaa recognise incoming emails by sender, recipient or subject and do something with them automatically: Block the message (it does not arrive anywhere) or Automatically close the ticket (the message arrives, but the ticket closes immediately and aishaa does not analyse it). The rules apply to all organisations in your account.
Where to find this
Go to Account > Incoming email rules. The page is called Incoming email rules and has the explanation: Define conditions for new incoming emails and choose whether matching messages are blocked or their tickets are automatically closed. The page was previously known as Blocked emails; that old name still leads to the same page.
Who: from the Organisation admin role. The rules apply to the whole account, so to all organisations at once.
The Incoming email rules page under Account > Incoming email rules, with the rule builder (Action, Reason, Conditions) at the top and the list of existing rules below it.
Create a rule
- Under Action, choose what should happen to a matching email: Block or Automatically close (see the table below).
- Optionally enter a Reason (optional, maximum 1024 characters). The reason is only visible to your team in the list of rules.
- Under Conditions, set one to three conditions. Each condition consists of a Field, a Type and a Value. With Add condition you add a second or third condition. You can only use each field once per rule.
- Click Create rule. You see the message The incoming email rule was created.
A rule only takes effect if all of its conditions match at the same time. If you want to block two different senders, for example, create two rules.
Action
| Option | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Block | The email is not processed. No ticket is created and the message is not added to an existing ticket. The message does not end up in Spam either and cannot be retrieved. |
| Automatically close | The email arrives as usual (as a new ticket, or as a message in an existing ticket). Immediately afterwards, aishaa sets the ticket to Closed. aishaa does not read the message and does not write a proposal. Workflows that start at Message read, such as an acknowledgement of receipt, therefore do not start. |
Conditions
| Field | Available types | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Sender | Exact, Contains, Domain | Maximum 320 characters |
| Recipient | Exact, Contains, Domain | Maximum 320 characters |
| Subject | Exact, Contains | Maximum 2048 characters |
Domain is not available for Subject. If you still choose the Subject field for a condition with the Domain type, the type automatically switches to Contains. Every condition must have a value; otherwise you see the message Every condition requires a value.
The types mean the following:
| Type | With Sender or Recipient | With Subject |
|---|---|---|
| Exact | The full email address equals the value, for example noreply@example.com. |
The full subject equals the value. Upper and lower case make no difference. |
| Contains | The email address contains the value somewhere, for example noreply. Upper and lower case make no difference. |
The subject contains the value somewhere. Upper and lower case make no difference. |
| Domain | The email address ends in the specified domain, for example example.com. You can enter the value with or without @. |
Not available. |
With Recipient, aishaa looks at all the addresses the email was sent to. The condition matches if one of those addresses matches.
View and delete rules
Below the rule builder is the list of existing rules. For each rule you see the action, the conditions and the reason. You filter the list with the Search rules field. You delete a rule with the bin icon; you then see The incoming email rule was deleted. You cannot edit a rule. If you want to change a rule, delete it and create a new one.
As long as there are no rules yet, the page shows No incoming email rules have been configured.
When a rule applies
- aishaa checks the rules at the moment an email comes in, before everything that happens after that (spam filter, linking to a conversation, AI analysis). So a rule does not apply retroactively to emails that have already arrived.
- Block applies to every incoming email that meets the rule, even if it is a reply to an existing ticket.
- Automatically close applies to the ticket the message ends up in. If that ticket was already set to Closed, it stays closed. Otherwise the ticket goes to Closed and disappears from the workload; any waiting status for an external reply is cleared at the same time.
- If an email meets several rules, Block takes precedence over Automatically close.
- A rule only counts if it has at least one condition.
Good to know
- Incoming email rules are something different from the spam filter. The spam filter works with a score and puts suspicious messages in Spam, where you can still review them. A rule with Block discards the message permanently. See Spam filter and allowed senders.
- Use Automatically close for mail you do want to keep but do not want to handle, such as delivery confirmations or system notifications from a supplier. The message can then still be found in the ticket, but takes no attention and aishaa does not read it.
- Rules apply to the whole account. If you want to block a sender in one organisation only, consider blocking the sender from the ticket (see Merge, move and block contacts).
- Preferably test a new rule with Automatically close first. If it turns out to work well, you can still replace it with a rule with Block.
- There is no way to switch a rule off temporarily; deleting it is the only way.
- A workflow that starts at A message comes in also starts for an automatically closed email. In such a workflow, the Without automatic AI field is then true. See Triggers and events.