Email accounts (incoming and outgoing email)

Email accounts hold the email server and connection details for email integrations in Pega Platform.

The Sender section of the Email account form contains the details for sending emails from Pega Platform, such as the email address of the account, the email address to which recipients can reply, and the server information for outgoing email connections.

The Receiver section of the Email account form contains the details for receiving emails to Pega Platform, such as the email address and server details that you want to use to receive email.

Email listeners and email channels use the sender and receiver details in an email account record to read emails and create or update cases, send automatic replies and notifications, and more.

For more information, see Creating an email account.

Email listeners (incoming email)

Email listeners monitor and pull emails from the inbox that you specify in the Receiver section of an email account record. You can configure how often your email listener checks the inbox for new emails, configure the number of emails an email listener processes at a time, or specify whether you want your email listener to process inbound autoreply messages, such as out of office notifications. For best performance, configure one email listener to monitor an email account. Configuring multiple listeners to monitor the same inbox can cause throttling.

Email listeners use the details in the Sender section of an email account record to know where to send autoreply messages. For example, if you configure case creation from an email, an email listener can automatically notify the sender of their case number.

Certain configurations, such as creating an email channel or enabling case creation by email, automatically generate email listeners. For more information, see Creating an Email channel and Enabling creation by email of top-level cases.

If you want to use more basic configurations, such as creating a case from an email, you can also create email listeners manually in Dev Studio. For more information, see Creating an email listener.

Service email rules and service activities (incoming email)

Service email rules determine how an email message translates to the clipboard, so that Pega Platform can determine which service activity to use. The service activity then processes the email message on the clipboard. Service activities typically create or update cases directly, or by using more advanced options, such as Pega Email Bot™. If there are any attachments to the email, the service activity includes them with the case.

For example, an email listener pulls in an email message with a loan application attachment. The email listener routes the message to a service email rule for creating loan cases. The service activity in the email service rule creates a loan case based on the information in the email, and adds the loan application forms to the case. The email listener then automatically sends an acknowledgment of receipt email to the loan applicant, with their loan case number.

Certain configurations, such as creating an email channel or enabling case creation by email, automatically generate service email rules. For more information, see Creating an Email channel and Enabling creation by email of top-level cases.

If you want to use more basic configurations, such as creating a case from an email, you can also create service email rules manually in Dev Studio. For more information, see Creating a Service Email rule.