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Email: Wait for reply

Use this action to send a manual task to someone not part of your PagerDuty Workflow Automation team through email. In order for the task to mark as Complete the person who received the email task must reply to the email. Make note of this in the email body.

Use case

This action is useful for having people outside of your PagerDuty Workflow Automation team work with a specific instance. Examples of people who may interact with your team are: vendors, contractors, interview candidates, meeting guests, etc.

This action also has two unique PagerDuty Workflow Automation features, email tracking and email bounce handling.

Use email tracking to confirm email delivery

This action has the option to track when the sent email is opened. To turn this on or off set the Track Email Opens field to True. This will record information like if the Email was opened, the Date Time when it was opened, or the IP address of where it was opened.

Use email tracking to set up unique task conditions:

  • If an email was never opened, send a reminder next week.
  • Collect the IP address and Date time data for an email campaign and see what regions are opening the email within the first 5 minutes.

Email tracking false positives and negatives

Some recipients will have email providers or servers that strip out the delivery tracker, or open all emails before handing it off to the recipient. This could create false positives (tracking says it was opened, but wasn’t) or false negatives (tracking says it wasn’t opened, but it was).

So although the action uses industry standard email tracking technology, the tracking has limitations and will not be 100% accurate.

Use the email bounce feature to handle undelivered messages

If an email is sent but is undeliverable, this action’s email bounce feature will automatically return unique output fields like:

  • Email bounced: A TRUE or FALSE response for whether the email bounced.
  • Bounced email address: The email address where the email could not be delivered.
  • Bounce message: The message or error returned by the system.

This email bounce capability makes for easy automation of undeliverable mail. For example:

  • After a large email campaign is sent, collect each Bounced email address in a data table for review.
  • Or, automate resending a bounced email based on the Bounce message, if the issue was temporary.

For more information on setting up email bounce handling, best practices, and tips on troubleshooting, check out the Undelivered or bounced email article.

note
  • Note: If an email is opened or bounces after the process ends, the fields can’t be updated. This task will update the email delivery or bounce fields after the task has ended, but is unable to update fields after the Workflow has ended. To avoid this, add a task with a delay after this task, or set up the Workflow so this task is not the last task in a process.

How to configure this action

The maximum number of recipients between To:, CC:, and BCC: is 50.

Fields for this action

  • To address

    • A specific email address or a reference field from a prior task or instance. The to address is required
  • CC

    • Add any email addresses in a comma separated list to include in the CC. This is useful for notifying someone of the task, like for compliance or mailing lists.
  • BCC

    • Add any email addresses in a comma separated list to include in the BCC. This is useful for sending emails to large mailing lists where the list should remain private.
  • Sender name

    • The name of the company or person this email is coming from. The sender name is not required
  • Email subject

    • The email reference line. The email subject is required
    • Replacement text for the footer, including a link to unsubscribe, if appropriate. If left blank, the default footer will be displayed
  • Email body

    • The message in the email describing what the form is for. This is different than the form instructions.

    • 💡   Tip: Use Markdown to format the email body with bold, italics, links, images, headers, and more. Conditionally displaying text is also supported.

  • Attachments

    • Any documents for the recipient. This may include guidelines or necessary data to complete the task. Attachments are not required. The current system limit for outbound emails (including attachments) is 7mb.
  • New field name for response file

    • Files attached to an email response will be saved using this name. This is not required
  • Mark complete on bounce

    • Select True or False from the drop down to choose how the task is handled if an email cannot be delivered.
      • Select True to mark this task complete when the email cannot be delivered.
      • Select False or leave blank to leave the task open so that the web form can be completed manually or the instance canceled.

    💡   Tip: Bounce output fields are added to the task when an email bounces. Automated bounce handling can be configured by using the bounce output fields in task conditions.

  • Track Email Opens

    • Select True or False from the drop down to enable or disable email tracking. Read more about how to Use email tracking to confirm email delivery..
      • Select True to track whether or not the email was opened.
      • Select False or leave blank to not track email opens.
  • Output Field Prefix

    • To help keep output fields organized, choose an output field prefix to add to the beginning of each output field name as this action may output more than one field.
    • The step’s name is used as the prefix by default.

What will this output?

This task sends an email and any response to the email is captured in fields.

Bounce output fields are added to the task when an email bounces. Automated bounce handling can be configured by using the bounce output fields in task conditions.

Email tracking fields are added to the output if Track Email Opens is enabled.

This action may generate multiple fields. To help keep output fields organized, the prefix above will be added to the beginning of each of the output field names, separated by two dashes. Each field will result as:{{output-field-prefix--output-field}}. Learn more

Output fields for this action

  • From email

    • The email address from the reply.
  • Full name

    • The full name on the account from the reply.
  • Subject

    • The subject of the reply.
  • Sent timestamp

    • The time the reply was sent in YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM format.
  • Body text

    • The body text from the reply.
  • HTML

    • The entire reply converted into HTML format.
  • Full email

    • The full email thread, including the reply and all emails before it.
  • Number of attachments

    • The number of attachments sent in the reply.
  • Email response attachment

    • A file field of any attachments sent in the reply.
  • Email response attachment filename

    • The file name for any attachments sent in the reply.

Additional Output fields for email tracking

  • Email opened

    • A TRUE or FALSE response for whether or not the email was opened.
  • Email opened datetime

    • The date and time the email was opened.
  • Email opened by IP

    • The IP Address for the user who opened the email.
  • Email opened by user agent

    • This will capture the message returned by the addresses where the email bounced.

Additional Output fields if an email bounces

  • To

    • A list of all recipients of the email a form task.
  • Email bounced

    • A TRUE or FALSE response for whether or not an email bounced.
  • Bounced email address

    • A list of all the email addresses where the email bounced.
  • Bounce message

    • This will capture the message returned by the addresses where the email bounced.
  • Bounce type

    • The bounce type for the bounced email.

Get help with a problem or question

If something’s not working as expected, or you’re looking for suggestions, check through the options below.

Why are the bounce fields always empty?

After an email is sent, if it bounces this action normally returns extra output fields like: Email bounced, Bounced email address and Bounce message.

A common reason why these fields may not appear or appear blank is if the process ends before the email bounces. If an email is opened or bounces after the process ends, the fields cannot be updated.

To avoid this, add a task with a delay after the email task, or set up the Workflow so this task is not the last task in a process.

Why are my emails not sending?

If you get the bounce message “PagerDuty Workflow Automation has sent too many emails to this address recently. Please try again later”:

  • PagerDuty Workflow Automation limits the number of emails you can send to a single email address to 100 emails per hour. Exceeding that amount, under all circumstances, will trigger this message.

  • If you have a business case that requires you to send over 100 emails an hour to a single recipient, please contact PagerDuty Support.

If you have the comment on the instance, “PagerDuty Workflow Automation did not send your email … because an email with the exact same subject and body was sent to this address within the last hour.”:

  • PagerDuty Workflow Automation has an built-in spam prevention system to limit unintentional duplicate emails—this is intended to help avoid accidental spam, or embarrassing duplicates.

  • This error occurs if an email with an identical body and subject line has been sent to the same email address within the last hour. To send the exact same email, wait an hour.

  • To bypass the spam protection, see How do I bypass the spam protection altogether?.

If you have the comment on the instance, “PagerDuty Workflow Automation did not send your email … to [addresses] because … have a history of bouncing”:

  • If prior emails have repeatedly bounce for a given email address, that address will be added to our blacklist to prevent sending messages inadvertently. This message indicates that PagerDuty Workflow Automation skipped sending the message because past messages repeatedly bounced.
  • If you know the issue that causes the bounce is fixed, you can email support to ask for the email to be removed from the blacklist.
I got a “Recipient count exceeds 50 “ fix task

This is a fixed limit on email actions. Each email action is capable of sending to up to 50 total recipients across To:, CC:, and BCC:.

  • For example, you could have 20 addresses in TO:, 15 addresses in CC:, and 15 addresses in BCC:, but no more. Even 1 extra address in any field would hit the limit.

If you need to send an email message to more than 50 recipients, you can spilt your recipient list into groups of 50 recipients or less, then send separate messages to each group.

How do I bypass the spam protection altogether?

To bypass the spam prevention, make each email unique. For example, add the Run Start Date to each email—this globally available field includes the start date in 2020-01-22T16:35:55.342Z format. This will ensure all emails are sent, even if all other content is the same.

💡   Tip: To make the date format more readable, use the Dates: Format a date time action with a format like D/M/Y HH:mm:ss.

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