Configuring Preprocessing Rules

Typically, threaded messages include all the succeeding replies starting with the original message. If the Mail Connector updates object's Activity log with every reply from the communication thread without preprocessing, each subsequent record will include the content of the previous records.

In order to prevent the Mail Connector from creating duplicate records Alloy Navigator uses preprocessing rules. The Mail Connector analyzes e-mail messages and cleans unwanted text from the message when it matches the rule. Alloy Navigator offers a set of preconfigured rules for the popular e-mail clients, which are initially disabled. You can enable these rules, and add your own preprocessing rules, if needed. You enable (select) the rules when configuring the Mail Connector job.

NOTE: The Mail Connector applies preprocessing rules only if the e-mail message is part of an object’s communication thread (the message contains a special MessageID Tag) and the object is not in a terminal status, such as “Closed” or “Retired.” For details, see Using Incoming Messages to Update Objects and Default E-mail Processing Logic.

A preprocessing rule consists of the following components:

• A regular expression to search for the specific text block in the message.

  INFO: A regular expression is a pattern that consists of one or more character literals, operators, or constructs. For details, see Regular expressions.

• Actions to perform when the matched text is found.

Creating Preprocessing Rules

To create a preprocessing rule:

1. From the Sidebar, navigate to E-mail Processing > Preprocessing and click New. The Reply Preprocessing Rule window opens.
2. In the Name field, type the rule name.
3. Under Regular Expression, specify the regular expression that will search the required text in the message.
4. Under Processing Options, specify the action that will be performed if the matched text is found:
   • Depending on the format of the e-mail, unwanted text could be located either before or after the matched text block. Specify what part you want to remove.
     • If the unwanted part of the message is located after the matched text, click after the Expression.
     • If the unwanted part of the message is located before the matched text, click before the Expression.
   • To delete the matched text block itself, select the Also remove matched text check box.
   • If you enable several preprocessing rules for the Mail Connector job, you may want to stop processing after a certain rule. To do this, select Stop processing remaining rules.
5. Optional: In the Sample Message section, test how the rule processes the sample e-mail message.
6. Click OK to save your changes.