Documentation
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INDEX

Documentation Library

Search for information on Hornbill Documentation.

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Have questions about this site?

What is this site?

  • This website is Hornbill's new product documentation website and is currently under development.
  • It is intended that all existing and future public-facing documentation we produce will be available to search, browse and share.
  • Hornbill's current documentation is available at Hornbill Wiki but over time this content will be migrated to this documentation site.
  • Please feel free to have a look around at any time.

Why has Hornbill created this site?

  • Hornbill's products have moved on considerably since we introduced it almost 10 years ago. At the time, the MediaWiki tool was sufficient, but we have outgrown it.
  • Our customers are more enterprise focused and more self-sufficient than ever before, so for 2023 and beyond we have established a new documentation platform and team to drive our documentation initiative forwards.
  • We are aiming to deprecate the use of Hornbill Wiki for most Hornbill related documentation.
  • We want to enable our growing partner network with product resources and information, documentation beyond our Wiki approach is required.
  • We could definitely do with some help, and may even pay for some! If you have domain knowledge and would like to help, please check out our Hornbill Docs Contributor Guide and contact the Hornbill docs team at docs@hornbill.com.

What will this site be good for?

  • Community contribution will be facilitated, encouraged, and most welcome.
  • High quality documentation, will be kept up to date as rapidly as our products evolve.
  • Real-time content search and discovery.
  • Articles organized into books, books into libraries, creating a more natural and logical structure to our documentation.
  • Legacy API documentation and various other documentation sources will all be consolidated into a single unified documentation system.
  • Documentation available in browser as well as printable/viewable as PDF on demand.
  • Personalized documentation experience, allowing dark/light mode, article subscriptions, social media sharing and other useful features.
  • Almost all publicly available documentation on docs.hornbill.com will be open-source and available to fork on GitHub, allowing customers to derive their own custom documentation around Hornbill products should they wish to.

What is the timeline for this site?

  • We have taken the decision to publish and make available early, there is very little content at this time.
  • As and when we have completed/usable documentation, it will be published here.
  • We have a host of additional features we wish to add over time, so please watch this space.
  • We expect most of our existing documentation should be reviewed/migrated to docs.hornbill.com over the coming months.
  • The documentation project will be ongoing, will continue to expand, evolve and improve day-by-day.

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More...

Email Action

The Email Action within a request enables the sending of emails directly from the request to any recipient that you wish to communicate with regarding that particular request. Email communication sent from a request is captured in the Timeline to help track and view all outbound emails sent about that request.

Mailboxes

Emails sent from a request are sent from a Shared Mailbox rather than an individual user. This ensures a single point of email communication from the Service Desk.

  • From
    The From field will be set automatically to the mailbox that has been set as the default mailbox for the service under which the request is logged. If the agent sending the email from the request has rights/access to more than one mailbox, a drop-down list will be available for them to manually change which mailbox the email will be sent from.

Recipients

The recipients of an e-mail can include Hornbill Users, and Hornbill Contacts, or if the recipient does not exist within Hornbill, you can simply provide their e-mail address.

  • To
    Add one or more recipients who will receive the e-mail. The customer of the request is automatically added as a recipient as they are seen as the most common recipient, however, there is no restriction on who the email is sent to.
  • CC/BCC
    Clicking on the CC/BCC option, these two fields will be exposed to allow additional recipients to be added as either a carbon copy or as a blind carbon copy.
  • Connections
    For ease of communication with people who are connected to a request, you can quickly include connections as recipients of your email.

Attachments

For any outgoing e-mail, a user can include attachments as part of the e-mail. By Clicking on the Paper Clip button the file upload is displayed.

  • File Upload
    Click on the File Upload button to browse your local file system or you can drag and drop a file into the designated area. The attached files are displayed and each file can be removed if it was added in error.
  • Associated Files
    You can include files that are already attached to the request. After selecting the paper clip button, if there are existing files already associated with the request, an option titled Show Associated files is displayed. Clicking on this link will show a list of the attachments associated with the request. You can select one or more of these attachments to include with your e-mail.

E-mail Template

When an email is composed from within a request, a template is used to pre-populate the subject and body of the e-mail. This is a great way to provide a standard format for all of the outgoing emails.

  • Default Template
    The default email template used can be based on the request type, and service against which the request has been logged. The selected template name is displayed, and the email template content is made available. If a template is not set against a serivce, the RequestMessage template is used.
  • Variables
    A template can contain variables that are automatically populated from information contained within the request. For , an e-mail may start with Dear John where John is the first name of the customer on the request and the variable {{Customer Coworker.H_first_name}} was used. If a variable that is displayed within curly braces is visible as {{variable name}} this means that the variable has failed to populate. If this happens, the text representing the variable can be manually removed or replaced before sending, or the information required can be updated on the request and then the template reloaded into the e-mail action. Alternatively, the template itself needs updating to either remove or change to the correct variable.
  • Selecting a Template
    In some cases, the use of multiple templates may be required. The application setting app.email.request.operation.templateSelectable is available which can be enabled to allow a user to select from a list of available templates. This setting is enabled within Administration under Service Manager > Settings. This is a global setting and will apply to all request types and all services, and will return a list of all email templates.

Message Editor

Depending on the settings configured in Service Manager there are two options for the Message Editor

Template Editor

The E-mail action has a built-in editor to allow you to format your emails before sending them. A toolbar is provided with a number of options to help you compose the perfect email.

  • Format the font by applying different font types and colors.
  • Include links including the ability to embed links into selected text.
  • Add images, either by pasting or providing a URL to an image source.
  • Add bullets, numbering, subscript and superscript text.
  • Automatically loads the associated email template to allow to manage any unresolved variables by removing, editing, and updating.

Text Editor

This is a more simplistic version of the editor which provides a plain text editor that simply injects the text into a defined email template behind the scenes.

Snippets

Snippets provide the ability to define common responses that you want to include in outgoing email content. The use of Snippets ensures that the same response does not need to be typed manually each time and ensures a consistent level of response is given by all analysts who use the snippets rather than manually entering responses each time.

  • Create and use personal Snippets that only you have access to
  • Create and use team Snippets that can be used by all your team members
  • Create and use service Snippets that can be used by all teams that support a service

Settings

These settings allow you to configure the use between having the full Template Editor or a simple Text email.

Setting Description
app.email.request.operation.composerType This setting has a choice of Template Editior, Message Text, and Analyst Setting that determines which email editor is used.

Template Editor sets the Email Action to use the Email Template Editor and Preview.

Message Text sets the Email Action to use the basic Text field editor. It is mandatory that the email templates that are used when this setting is selected contain the variable {{message}} is positioned where the text is to be included on the email.

Analyst Setting allows each user to select and switch between both editors. It is mandatory that the email templates that are used when this setting is selected contain the variable {{message}} is positioned where the text is to be included on the email. In the case where the user uses the Template Editor, if the {{message}} variable is included in the template, it will be automatically removed for the user.
app.email.request.operation.templateEditor If set to On, it will default to the Email Template Editor, false shows the old message text. This setting is used when the app.email.request.operation.composerType is set to Analyst Setting
app.email.request.operation.templateSelectable When the Email Template Editor is enabled, this setting will allow a user to select from a list of available Email Templates.

Timeline

When an email has been sent, a record of the email is posted to the request timeline. To view the content of the sent email, select View Email from the more menu option on the timeline post.

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