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How the Text API Uses Artifacts

The Text API processes the subject or body of email notifications. Mailbox rules let you identify artifacts and values that the Text API uses. For example, you can define the rule for incidents as Incident:{{object_id}}, so finding Incident:1234 translates to %INCIDENT_ID=1234 for the Text API. 1234 is the ref_num for the Incident. Because the artifact must be unique in the email and easy to find, you can make the artifact more distinctive such as %Incident:{{object_id}}%.

Follow the {{object_id}} keyword with a character which is not a letter, number, comma, forward-slash (/), plus sign (+), or equals (=) sign, because these characters can appear within an artifact. Otherwise, it is possible that characters which follow the artifact can be misinterpreted as part of the value of the artifact, or that a character within the value of the artifact can be misinterpreted as the character which follows the value.

Mail Eater does the following:

1. Finds the artifact within an email (such as Incident:1234) that maps to the appropriate ticket or other object supported by the Text API.
2. Translates the artifact to a Text API token (such as %INCIDENT_ID=1234).
3. Mail Eater submits the tagged message to the Text API. The Text API processes the email, applies the text, commands, or both which it contains to the appropriate ticket, and generates an automatic response email indicating whether the email message it received was successfully applied. Depending on the actions performed, a notification email message is also sent separately to indicate certain specific events, such as the creation of a ticket.