Question

How are my emails getting routed?

Answer

When using the email functionality within Cases, customers can either reply to an existing email thread (where the new message will be added to the current conversation) or start a completely new email thread.

To ensure that customer emails are directed to the correct thread and to prevent delays in customer service, Persona uses unique email identifiers to accurately route messages. Persona uses two unique email identifiers: Message-ID and Ticket-ID.

Message-ID

Persona’s email threading logic follows RFC standards, where the "In-Reply-To" and "References" fields must contain unique values. When an email is created within the Case Messaging module, Persona automatically assigns it a unique identifier called Message-ID.

When you reply to an email, the Message-ID of the original email is included in the "In-Reply-To," "References" section. This Reference ID is used to thread the reply to the original email. For every inbound email, Persona scans Message-IDs stored in "In-Reply-to" and "References" fields. If that message-ID matches an existing outbound email, then the email is added to the email thread.

Ticket-ID

In addition to the Message-ID, Persona assigns a unique identifier called a Ticket-ID to each email or notification via an embedded HTML tag. This Ticket-ID helps ensure that emails are correctly threaded. As long as the tag remains intact, the email will maintain proper threading.

Unthreaded email conversations

If a customer sends an email message to the email address used in your Cases email functionality (i.e. organization-name@cases.withpersona.com) without a Message-ID or Ticket-ID, it will be treated as a new thread.

These unthreaded emails may be manually routed within your organization, which can lead to delays. To avoid potential response delays, avoid sending one-off emails to organization-name@cases.withpersona.com. Instead, reply within an existing thread whenever possible.