How to trigger a workflow from an incoming email to a document library

Question

I have been trying a bunch of different stuff to get this to work, lots of great info here. I thought I might as well ask to get some answers for sure or see if anybody had any ideas!

Some background: SharePoint 2013; I'm creating a change management record system by allowing my group to email the description of what they are changing, along with any supporting documents as attachments, to a SharePoint document library made specifically for this purpose.

The document library is email-enabled, and when emailing to it, a folder with the email subject is created, which inside contains a ".eml" copy of the email body/text and any attachments that were on the email.

--This is all working as intended so far--

Now, I'm trying to attach an Approval workflow to it such that the members of the team get sent a message with a link to the email item (or maybe just the folder, I'm open to whatever works) along with the Outlook "Open this Task..." link up at the top for approve/reject/etc.

This setup works exactly as intended if:

• 1) The workflow is set up as "Document" or "This List" and configured to kick off on "item created"
• 2) There are NO attachments (i.e. the folder in the library contains only the .eml file). If there are attachments, it triggers a workflow for EVERY item... I just want one workflow per 'submission'.

I've tried setting up the workflow based on "Folder" and "item created", since that seems to be what the email does, but nothing ever triggers in that configuration.

I've also considered using "Document Sets" -- since this is pretty much exactly the use case for them -- but there doesn't seem to be a way to change the "Incoming Email" settings to have it create a document set or something like that.

tl;dr:

• trying to set up workflow for incoming email

• incoming email groups items into folders by subject (.eml + attachments)

• doesn't trigger if set up as Folder workflow with "Start on item created"

• does trigger if set up as Document/This List workflow with "Start on item created"

• If set up as Document/This List, it triggers on each individual item rather than per email

Any ideas or insight on how I can get this to work how I envision? Thanks!

Answer 1

I've run into this several times, it isn't enabled by default. It needs to be enabled via PowerShell:

$spWebService = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService
 $spWebService.DeclarativeWorkflowAutoStartOnEmailEnabled = $true
 $spWebService.Update()

Answer 2

Small addition to that is that you check the status of this switch:

$spWebService = [Microsoft.SharePoint.Administration.SPWebService]::ContentService
$spWebService.DeclarativeWorkflowAutoStartOnEmailEnabled

Source: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/lync/en-US/6a246070-b107-43bb-8c99-99fda4fccc1d/workflow-not-being-triggered-by-incoming-email?forum=sharepointgeneral