Correct usageof %DESCRIPTION variable in Maileater

Products

• CA Service Desk Manager
• CA Service Management - Service Desk Manager
• ServiceDesk

Issue/Introduction

ServiceDesk provides email interface to create tickets, multiple variables can be entered in the body of an email to update the fields of the ticket. One of the variables is %DESCRIPTION, if this variable is incorrectly used it causes other variables to be ignored by maileater. The solution provides the correct usage of the %DESCRIPTION variable.

 

Environment

Release: Service Desk Manager all versions

Resolution

The description on a ticket can be updated via maileater in two ways.

1. Maileater considers the first line in the message body without a label which begins with a '%' character to be description. So, the %DESCRIPTION variable is not required.
   
   
2. If %DESCRIPTION variable is used, it should be the last argument in the message body, because maileater considers everything from there on as description.

Given below are the correct and incorrect examples of using %DESCRIPTION.

Correct Examples:

Cannot ping machine XYZ from the mainframe.
%CATEGORY=Networks
%PRIORITY=1
%TYPE=I

%CATEGORY=Networks
%PRIORITY=1
%TYPE=I
%DESCRIPTION=Cannot ping machine XYZ from the mainframe.

 

Incorrect Examples:

%CATEGORY=Networks
%PRIORITY=1
%TYPE=I
Cannot ping machine XYZ from the mainframe.

%DESCRIPTION=Cannot ping machine XYZ from the mainframe.
%CATEGORY=Networks
%PRIORITY=1
%TYPE=I

%CATEGORY=Networks
Cannot ping machine XYZ from the mainframe.
%PRIORITY=1
%TYPE=I

%CATEGORY=Networks
%PRIORITY=1
%DESCRIPTION=Cannot ping machine XYZ from the mainframe.
%TYPE=I