Loss of Send Email Option for Customers

So it seems that emails no longer flow on either direction between our (customer+vendor) ticketing systems. This is a severe functional downgrade on the service that reduces mutual transparency on taken ticket actions and comments and living without this causes double work for our main users administering the tickets. Ours (the customer) change management cannot happen using only vendors portal and some kind of integration is a must to avoid double work. So far the light email integration with ticket ID’s on the subject, IFS’ id-line on the message body and ticket portal addresses as recipients has been sufficient.

We either need this reply by mail capability back (preferred) or some solution to replace it, urgently. Escalation asked from our side.

The matter here is the removal of reply by mail functionalities of IFS LCS and CEC ticketing portals. The comments above have been moved from the LCS update info thread. The change was done last saturday 1.10.2022.

Hi Kristen,

There seems to be an issue with the statement that is made here about communication coming from the cases that the customer has with IFS.

“

• You will either have to visit the case journal and/or received a notification that a contact note is added to the case that you created.”

It is not acceptable that the customer should have to check regularly for replies from an engineer on the case.  I accept that we should visit the case to add updates, but if the engineer updates a case, then the customer must be notified!

It seems that since Saturday, the customer is no longer receiving notifications of changes made to the cases.  This is not acceptable in any support system.  

Please get this rectified as soon as possible before missing notifications becomes an issue and holds up cases.

Thanks

Andy Purdey

May I ask why the “Send Email” was disabled in LCS?

How about customers that are not using IFS Managed Cloud and therefore don’t use SNOW-Tickets - how do we communicate with them? They are not listed in SNOW so we can’t use a ticket for communication.

A contact note in LCS doesn’t always cause an automatic notification to the person that you want to reach!

Write an Email in Outlook and then manually copy it into the case? Isn’t that a bit stone age?

Hi All - Apologies for the delay. I should have some more information to share about this soon and I’ve alerted the appropriate people to the concerns you’ve raised. 

There are changes coming in the way you handle cases/requests soon and we’ll share those details soon, but I’ll get more info on the reason for this change and what you should do in the meantime asap.

This is change is really a mess. I’m getting one or even more notifications for “my” cases and additionally an email, I guess because the sender is not sure that the automatic notification is working (I would do the same).

In other cases where I’m added as contact with “CC” option, I get no information at all.

Please un-do this change.

Hi,

As a customer thsi change is totally unacceptable.

Sorry, I don’t want to be rude, but any software company that is not able to provide an appropriate, state of the art support system is just ridicolous.

Having an email notification in a support system was state of the art for decades.

Please fix this and undo this change until another appropriate system is readyly available to use.

Hi All - I have a bit more information on this. The vendor we use has depreciated the “send email” option within the platform. It was removed, so restoring this functionality is not an option. We realize this complicates the process for managing your cases and are working on a long-term solution.

Still no solution to this issue?

We have now passed the first anniversary of the problem (since 1.10.2022). During this time the old LCS and CEC portals have been removed and we are currently using the new Service Portal (since 13.2.2023). Some email traffic is now working, like replies from the IFS portal to our own ITSM portal (and also directly to individuals own emails). What we are still lacking is the reply-capability from our ITSM portal or from individuals to the case at IFS Service Portal. There is currently no estimate when this could work as other things are prioritized first and the work required was more than expected. 

Currently Q3/2024 is seen as earliest possible moment of service on this matter. In addition to us, IFS is aware of 1 other customer wanting this email integration back. This seems to conflict with this thread where I count 5 other customers. Please let yourself be heard of your needs as it might help in prioritization, thanks.

As we are approaching a second anniversary of the problem (currently lacking only the reply back to case by email functionality) and as we are also halfway through the Q3/2024 already, I’m requesting a status update on this matter.

Also if there is some place to see what is coming next to the service portal, I’m interested.

Just got a link to this no-go answer https://support.ifs.com/csm?id=kb_article_view&table=kb_knowledge&sys_kb_id=abc743e233c30a14b142c3367d5c7b4e

Quite unsatisfactory.

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