Users added in CC are not getting added as request participants to the request

Summary

Customers added in CC are not added to the request participants field of the request, even though the user is already a customer in the space, but in a different customer organization.

Diagnosis

As mentioned in this document, anyone with access to the service space can add a request participant to a request by including the customer's email address in the "To" or "Cc" field of the email while creating the request through the mail handler. The users that will be added as request participants to the request actually depend on the Customer sharing options in the customer permissions of the space.

Solution

Review the setting at Space settings > Access > Customer permissions > Customer sharing. The three options behave differently for CC:

• Search those within their organization only — CC only works for customers in the same org; if the customer isn't in an org, sharing fails.

• Search those within their organization, or enter the email address of customers within their space — allows CC by email for space customers.

• Search those either within their space or organization — with Channel access set to Open (and account creation allowed), CC to any email works.

1. Search those within their organization only

   • Customers can use search to find other customers in their organizations and share requests with them.

   • If a customer isn’t in an organization, they won’t be able to share requests.

2. Search those within their organization, or enter the email address of customers within their space

   • Customers can use search to find other customers in their organizations and share requests with them.

   • Customers can share requests with other customers in the space by typing their email addresses.

   • If in Customer Permissions, the "Channel Access" setting is set as "Open - Anyone can submit requests to this space." (with Allow customers to create accounts in customer access settings), customers can also share requests with any email address. Sharing with an email address that doesn’t match an existing customer will create a new customer.

3. Search those either within their space or organization

   • Customers can use search to find other customers in their space or organization and share requests with them.

   • If in Customer Permissions, the "Channel Access" setting is set as "Open - Anyone can submit requests to this space." (with Allow customers to create accounts in customer access settings), customers can also share requests with any email address. Sharing with an email address that doesn’t match an existing customer will create a new customer.

Thus, you need to select either the second or the third option (whichever suits your use case) to add customers in CC as request participants to the request.

After adjusting the setting, send a test email CC'ing the affected customer and confirm they appear in the request's Request participants field.

To learn more about customer access settings, please refer to How customer access settings impact project permissions.