The Complaint Email Ingestion feature helps Vault QMS customers when it is not feasible to rely solely on manual creation of complaints, or an integration with another system to automate complaint creation. It enables customers to build an end-to-end automated complaint process by allowing organizations to configure a Vault Email Inbox to process Complaints received via email. When the Complaint Email Inbox receives an email, Vault automatically creates a Complaint. If configured by an Admin, Vault can store the original email and any attachments on the new complaint record.
If the Complaint Email Inbox receives an email about a complaint that already exists in Vault (for example, sender replies to the original email), Vault will record receipt of the additional email on the original Complaint record. Vault can also copy the subsequent emails, and their attachments, to the Complaint record.
While your Vault may process complaints using either a standalone Complaint object or a Quality Event of a Complaint Email object type, these are collectively referred to as “complaint records” in this article.
Create Complaint Email Processor Execution
When the Create Complaint email processor executes, it determines if a complaint record already exists in your Vault by checking the message ID and references in the incoming email’s header. If the processor does not find such a complaint record, it creates a new complaint record based on the associated Inbound Email Address Configuration.
Vault attempts to populate field data on the resulting complaint record from the source email using the following mapping:
| Email Data | Field on Complaint or Quality Event Object | Description & Limitations |
|---|---|---|
| Original Sender | Initial Reporter (initial_reporter_details__v) |
Plain text of original sender’s email address |
| From Email Address | Sender Email Address (sender_email_address__v) |
Plain text of sender’s email address |
| Email Sent Date | Initial Report Date (initial_report_date__v) |
Date field |
| Email Subject | Title (title__v) |
Plain text of email subject, up to 150 characters by default |
| Email Body | Email Body (email_body__v) |
Special field which renders email as described below |
| Email Text | Email Text (email_text__v) |
Long text field which contains the original plain text of the Email Body |
| Email Attachments | Added to the record in the Attachments section | Original Email in EML format and any other attachments. |
| Email Metadata | Initial Contact Method (initial_contact_method__v) |
Set to picklist value Email (email__v) |
| Email Metadata | Vault Email Inbox Address (vault_email_inbox_address__v) |
This is the Inbound Email Address the original email was sent to which triggered the processor to create the record |
| Email Metadata | Message ID (message_id__v) |
Message ID of the email |
| Email Metadata | Root Message ID (root_message_id__v) |
Original Message ID of the email |
Email Body & HTML
In the Email Body section or Email Body field of the Complaint Email record details page, Vault renders the email for viewing in its original language. In some situations, special characters may not render as they might in an email viewer. Click on the HTML icon to view the HTML text of the original email body.
Attachments
The Attachments section contains the original email file, and any files attached to the original email or any follow-up emails, up to a limit of 50 files. If an attachment has the same name and different content to an already existing attachment, Vault creates a new version of the attachment. Attachments will be processed until the attachment limit is reached. If the email processor attempts to add more than the limit, Vault sends a warning to the sender.
Followup & Duplicate Processing
Sometimes, a complainant responds to the original email that was already processed, or communication regarding a complaint is received via a reply to an External Notification. When the email processor executes, if a complaint record with the same message ID has already been created, or the message is a reply to an External Notification, the email processor will not create a new complaint record, and instead creates a join record that associates the email to the complaint record.
Processor Failures & Warnings
If the Create Complaint email processor fails to create a complaint record for an email, it notifies the sender of the failure using the Email Processing: Failed (qms_email_processing_failed__v) object message template. If the email processor successfully created the complaint record but encountered errors, it notifies the sender using the Email Processing: Warning (qms_email_processing_warning__v) object message template.
Related Permissions
To view Complaint Emails received via email and perform triage actions on them, you require a security profile which grants you the following permissions:
- Read, Create, and Edit permissions on the Complaint Email object type of either the Complaint or Quality Event object, per your Vault’s configuration.