How Auto reply works

The Auto reply mechanism involves these steps:

1. Create an invitation with a reply-to address, and a survey with a mailto link. The addresses send an email to @express.medallia.com. When Experience Cloud generates the email and survey, it can insert the survey ID into the address.

2. When an invitee replies to the Invitation email, an email is sent to Experience Cloud.

3. Experience Cloud locates an Auto Reply configuration that matches text in the To: field of the email. When there is no match, Experience Cloud replies with a 550: User does not exist error message.

4. When the configuration includes a From Email address, Experience Cloud looks for an email of the type Auto-Reply and uses that template to send an auto reply email to the invitee. No reply is sent when there is no Invite Auto-Reply template or not Auto Reply From Email value.

5. When the configuration includes a Tech Support To Email, Experience Cloud relays the email to the company email address specified in the field, attaching the invitee's reply. Optionally, the email can include helpful information about the invitation and survey.

Properties

Name

Identifies the Auto reply configuration. 

Match Emails

Identifies the incoming emails this configuration applies to.

This is a regex condition that attempts to match the local part (that is, the text before the @ symbol) in the To address of the incoming message. For example, entering medallia_techsupport matches medallia_techsupport@express.medallia.com.

Warning: Do not include the at sign (@) or domain in the expression: this test only looks at the text before the @ sign.

To match multiple possible addresses, separate the accounts with a pipe character (|), like this: orion_techsupport|survey-support|riga_techsupport.

Expandable Incoming Email

Whether or not to ignore the survey ID in an expandable address. Select this when the To address includes the survey ID.

Experience Cloud expects the To Email address of the message to be in one of two formats:

• Normal — account@domain.com
• Expandable — account.<survey-ID>@domain.com

Where survey ID is created by $SURVEY_EXTERNAL_ID$ or $DOT_SURVEY_EXTERNAL_ID$ in the email or survey version, such as orion.SURVEY_EXTERNAL_ID$@express.medallia.com which might create a To address such as orion.czgh324687@express.medallia.com.

Active

Whether the Auto reply configuration accepts emails or not.

Auto Reply 'From' Email

Email address to use in the 'From' field of the email reply. Any text in this field causes Experience Cloud to attempt to send a reply by using an Invite Auto-Reply email. No reply is sent when:

• The address is invalid.
• There is no template to handle the reply.
• There is no survey associated with the incoming message.
• The email domain is not listed in the Email domains screen.

Any tag available in the email is available by enclosing the tag in dollar signs ($). 

Important: The email address must match the data center that hosts the instance to avoid being incorrectly identified as spam. For example, medallia.com (U.S.), express.can.medallia.ca (Canada), or express.eu.medallia.eu (Europe). For more information, see Medallia Experience Cloud IP addresses and host names.

Auto Reply 'From' Name

Name to use in the From field of the email reply.

Any tag available in the email is available by enclosing the tag in dollar signs ($). 

Tech Support 'To' Email

Email address to receive technical support emails, which are the ones initiated by clicking the Support link in the invitation email footer. This is a company-owned email address responsible for handling survey issues where the invitee clicked on an email link in the survey.

Any text in this field causes Experience Cloud to attempt attach the survey information and relay the message. When this field is empty, no email is relayed. For more information, see Tech support messages.

Any tag available in the email is available by enclosing the tag in dollar signs ($). 

Tech Support 'To' Name

Name to use in the 'To' field of the relayed email message.

To assist people or Experience Cloud handling the response, start the name with some unique identifier.

Any tag available in the email is available by enclosing the tag in dollar signs ($). 

Tech support messages

Invitation emails should include a link for recipients to contact the support team of the company to resolve issues like opting out, incorrect contact information, and technical problems with the survey. The link should include the external survey ID to identify the invitation and survey instance associated with the incident. To do that, include $SURVEY_EXTERNAL_ID$ or $DOT_SURVEY_EXTERNAL_ID$ in the email, such as surveysupport_orion$DOT_SURVEY_EXTERNAL_ID$@express.medallia.com.

Experience Cloud then inserts the ID when it creates the invitation to create an address similar to this: surveysupport_orion.cpv2v9h8rwxx8z4@express.medallia.com.

When an Auto reply configuration handles the message, it attaches an HTML file with information about the invitation email and survey.

The support team then uses this information to resolve the incident. In the case where the survey information is not available — such as a from a faked survey — the attachment contains just this plain text message No survey info found.

Company auto-reply handlers

In the past, there were some rare cases where companies handled auto-reply emails. This service is no longer available.

Tips and best practices

• Always verify that:

  • The Match Emails condition is the same as the 'From' email address in the Distribution setting.

  • The domain email address in Auto Reply 'From' Email is listed in Email domains.

• When using a sandbox, the sandbox email domain must be listed in Email domains screen. For more information, see Medallia Experience Cloud IP addresses and host names.

• Any incoming email that does not match an Auto Reply configuration causes a 550: User does not exist error message to be sent as a reply to the invitees. This is useful for testing. If the Auto Reply matches the address, no error is sent.

• If you are getting a 550: User does not exist error message on reply messages, verify the 'From' email address ends with medallia.com (U.S.), medallia.ca (Canada), medallia.eu (Europe), or medallia.au (Australia).

• If an invitee replies to an invitation, that invitee does not receive any Reminder emails. However, invitees are still able to take the survey until it expires. The record status is set to DELIVERED_NO_REMINDER.

  • An automatic Out-of-office reply is considered an invitee reply, and that person will not receive reminder emails.

  • Experience Cloud identifies reply messages by analyzing the In-reply-to or References fields in the email header. If that information is missing or inaccurate, Experience Cloud is not able to identify the message as a reply, and as such, the Distribution setting stays in the DELIVERED status and sends Reminder emails (if available).

• Any tag available in the email is also available in the address and name properties. For example, include the Unit's email account in the reply name such as $ORION_UNIT_NAME$ reply.