Environment

Content Manager 10.x

Question

How does Content Manager decide which locations will be automatically added to the record as 'Author' and 'Addressee' contacts when registering an email message? 

Explanation

Note: Before authors will be automatically added to email records, the "Create author from email sender" option must be enabled in the target record type's 'Metadata Capture' page. The same applies to Addressee contacts from an email's To, Cc and Bcc fields - the relevant option must be enabled on the record type. 

When a user catalogues an email (either by drag & drop or Office integration), CM first interrogates the email for the Sender's email address. In most cases this will be an Internet (aka SMTP) format email address such as:
john.smith@abc.net.

In some cases, however, the email will not contain "Internet header" information because it was sent from one staff member to another within the organisation's own on-premise Exchange mail server - in the case of these emails the Sender address will be a long string in Exchange-format, such as:
'/O=MY ORGANISATION/OU=MYORG/CN=RECIPIENTS/CN=JSMITH'.

Once CM has determined the sender's email address it searches the locations list for any matching locations:

• If only one match is found, that location will be automatically added to the record as the Author and the name will display in bold in the author field on the entry form
• If more than one match is found*, the matching location with the highest unique identifier (uri) is chosen as the Author (because it's considered to have the most recent and up to date details), and the name will display in bold in the author field on the entry form. The user can select a different location before saving if they wish
  • * Note: This scenario can be avoided by enabling the system option: Locations -> "Ensure email addresses are unique".
• If no match is found, the sender's name will display as un-bolded text in the author field on the entry form, indicating the email address was not matched with a location.

In the last scenario where no matching email address is found, the behaviour for users will vary depending on the organisation's choice of setting in:

• System Options -> Record -> "When creating a new record with contacts of an unknown location type" (Ignore/Display Warning/Prevent)
• Record type option "Contact must exist in Content Manager".

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