With email notifications, you can use import export maps to leverage information about records and integrate with Outlook or another calendar.

For example, an email notification can create a calendar event based on the planned start and end dates of a change request. To enable integration with a calendar, the following iCalendar variables are available to be added to an email template message and reference the email template from the notification. The variables must be added to the Message Text field.

VariableDescription
${dtstart} Start Date
${dtend} End Date
${location} Location
${alarm_time} Alert or reminder time

By default, the instance computes the value of iCalendar variables using import and export maps for the Appointment [itil_appointment] and Change Request [change_request] tables. The instance also uses import and export maps for other tables, depending on which plugins you activate. For example, if you activate the Incident (com.snc.incident) plugin, the instance uses the import and export maps of the Incident [incident] table.

Each import export map can specify a different set of iCalendar fields. For example, the icalendar.change_request import export map only maps two iCalendar fields.

The instance uses the External Name value as the variable name in the email template. For example, the icalendar.change_request import export map defines the dtstart and dtend variables.
External name Associated variable name Table Field mapped Field label
dtstart ${dtstart} change_request start_date Planned start date
dtend ${dtend} change_request end_date Planned end date