---
title: Alert RCA with Autopilot and Email
source: https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/workflow-examples/integrations/autopilot-email-rca
---

This template runs [Autopilot](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/agentic-ai/autopilot/overview) on a New Relic alert and sends the root cause analysis as a formatted HTML email. If Autopilot returns no usable response, the workflow sends an error notice instead. For shared prerequisites and configuration notes, see [Autopilot RCA workflow templates](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/workflow-examples/integrations/autopilot-rca).

Before using this workflow, ensure you have:

-   An Email destination configured in New Relic — see [Create destinations](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/setup-and-configure/create-destinations)
-   The destination's UUID

This workflow completes the following steps:

1.  Runs Autopilot with a root cause analysis prompt scoped to the alert issue ID
2.  Checks whether Autopilot returned a usable response
3.  If Autopilot succeeds, formats the response as HTML and sends it to the email destination
4.  If Autopilot fails, sends an error email with the issue ID

This workflow uses `newrelic.autopilot.run` and `newrelic.notification.sendEmail`.

```yaml
name: autopilotEmailRCA
description: Automatically analyze New Relic alerts with Autopilot and send a formatted incident analysis report via email
workflowInputs:
  issueId:
    type: String
    required: true
    validations:
      - errorMessage: Must be a valid New Relic issue ID in UUID format
        pattern: '^[0-9a-fA-F]{8}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{12}$'
        type: regex
  emailDestinationId:
    type: String
    required: true
    validations:
      - pattern: ^[0-9a-fA-F]{8}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{4}-[0-9a-fA-F]{12}$
        errorMessage: "Invalid format. Please provide a valid UUID."
        type: regex
steps:
  - name: runAutopilot
    type: action
    action: newrelic.autopilot.run
    version: 1
    inputs:
      prompt: >-
        Investigate New Relic issue ${{ .workflowInputs.issueId }}.
        Produce an incident analysis report covering: what triggered the alert, likely root cause, affected entities, supporting evidence, and recommended next steps.
        IMPORTANT: Output your final answer DIRECTLY as clean, basic HTML. Use <h2> for section headers, <b> for bold text, <p> for paragraphs, <code> for logs/IDs, and standard <table>/<tr>/<td> tags with simple borders for tabular data. Do NOT use markdown.
      selectors:
        - name: agentResponse
          expression: .response.finalAnswer
        - name: agentResponseBlocks
          expression: '(.response.finalAnswer // "") as $r | (if ($r|type)=="string" then ($r | try fromjson catch null) else $r end) as $json | if ($json|type)=="object" and ($json.card.body|type)=="array" then $json.card.body elif ($json|type)=="array" then $json elif ($json|type)=="object" and ($json.text|type)=="string" then [{"type":"Text","value":$json.text}] else [{"type":"Text","value":($r|tostring)}] end'
    ignoreErrors: true

  - name: checkAutopilotResponse
    type: switch
    switch:
      - condition: ${{ (.steps.runAutopilot.outputs.agentResponse // "") != "" }}
        next: sendRcaEmail
    next: sendAutopilotError

  - name: sendRcaEmail
    type: action
    action: newrelic.notification.sendEmail
    version: 1
    inputs:
      destinationId: ${{ .workflowInputs.emailDestinationId }}
      subject: Autopilot RCA Report - Issue ${{ .workflowInputs.issueId }}
      message: '${{ def sanitizeHtml: gsub("(?i)<script\\b[^>]*>[\\s\\S]*?</\\s*script\\s*>"; "") | gsub("(?i)<\\s*script\\b[^>]*/?\\s*>"; "") | gsub("(?i)<style\\b[^>]*>[\\s\\S]*?</\\s*style\\s*>"; "") | gsub("(?i)<\\s*(iframe|object|embed|link|meta|form|svg)\\b[^>]*/?\\s*>"; "") | gsub("(?i)</\\s*(iframe|object|embed|form|svg)\\s*>"; "") | gsub("(?i)\\son\\w+\\s*=\\s*[^\\s>]+"; "") | gsub("(?i)javascript\\s*:"; ""); (.steps.runAutopilot.outputs.agentResponseBlocks // []) as $blocks | [ $blocks[] | if .type == "CodeBlock" then "<pre><code>" + ((.code // "") | gsub("&";"&amp;") | gsub("<";"&lt;") | gsub(">";"&gt;")) + "</code></pre>" else ((.value // "") | gsub("\\*\\*";"") | sanitizeHtml) as $clean | [ $clean / "\n" | .[] | select((. | gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$";"")) != "") ] as $lines | (reduce $lines[] as $line ([]; ($line | test("^\\s*\\|?\\s*:?-+:?\\s*(\\|\\s*:?-+:?\\s*)+\\|?\\s*$")) as $isSep | ($line | contains("|")) as $isPipe | if $isSep then . elif $isPipe then if (length > 0 and .[-1].type == "table") then .[0:-1] + [ .[-1] + {rows: (.[-1].rows + [$line])} ] else . + [ {type:"table", rows: [$line]} ] end else . + [ {type:"line", value: $line} ] end )) as $rawSegments | [ $rawSegments[] | if .type == "table" and (.rows | length) < 2 then {type:"line", value: .rows[0]} else . end ] as $segments | [ $segments[] | if .type == "table" then "<table style=\"width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;font-family:Arial,sans-serif;\">" + ([ .rows | to_entries[] | . as {key: $i, value: $row} | ($row | sub("^\\s*\\|";"") | sub("\\|\\s*$";"")) as $trimmed | [ $trimmed / "|" | .[] | gsub("^\\s+|\\s+$";"") ] as $cells | (if $i == 0 then "th" else "td" end) as $tag | (if $i == 0 then "text-align:left;padding:8px;border-bottom:2px solid #ccc;" else "padding:8px;border-bottom:1px solid #eee;" end) as $style | "<tr>" + ([ $cells[] | "<" + $tag + " style=\"" + $style + "\">" + . + "</" + $tag + ">" ] | join("")) + "</tr>" ] | join("")) + "</table>" else .value as $line | ($line | sub("^\\s+";"")) as $t | if ($t | startswith("<")) then $line elif ($line | startswith("### ")) then "<h3>" + ($line | ltrimstr("### ")) + "</h3>" elif ($line | startswith("## ")) then "<h2>" + ($line | ltrimstr("## ")) + "</h2>" elif ($line | startswith("# ")) then "<h2>" + ($line | ltrimstr("# ")) + "</h2>" elif ($line | startswith("- ")) then "<p>&#8226; " + ($line | ltrimstr("- ")) + "</p>" else "<p>" + $line + "</p>" end end ] | join("\n") end ] | join("\n") }}'
    next: end

  - name: sendAutopilotError
    type: action
    action: newrelic.notification.sendEmail
    version: 1
    inputs:
      destinationId: ${{ .workflowInputs.emailDestinationId }}
      subject: Autopilot RCA Failed - Issue ${{ .workflowInputs.issueId }}
      message: >-
        Autopilot could not produce findings for issue ${{ .workflowInputs.issueId }}. Please investigate manually.
    next: end
```

## How it works [#how-it-works]

The `runAutopilot` step uses two selectors to handle `finalAnswer` shape variability at the data-extraction layer:

-   **`agentResponse`** captures the raw `finalAnswer` value. The `checkAutopilotResponse` step uses this to determine whether Autopilot returned anything.
-   **`agentResponseBlocks`** normalizes the value into an array of typed block objects, handling three possible `finalAnswer` shapes: a plain string, a JSON-encoded object with a `.card.body` array, and a bare array. This gives the `sendRcaEmail` step a consistent structure to iterate over regardless of how Autopilot formatted its response.

`sendRcaEmail` processes the blocks inline:

-   `CodeBlock` items are rendered as `<pre><code>` with HTML entities escaped.
-   Other blocks pass through `sanitizeHtml`, which strips `<script>`, `<style>`, inline event handlers, and other potentially unsafe markup.
-   Markdown-style pipe tables are detected and converted to `<table>` elements with basic inline styles.
-   Heading prefixes (`# `, `## `, `### `) and bullet markers (`- `) are converted to the corresponding HTML tags.
-   All remaining lines are wrapped in `<p>` tags.

Unlike the [Alert RCA with Autopilot and Slack](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/workflow-examples/integrations/autopilot-slack-rca) template, HTML formatting is handled entirely within the `sendRcaEmail` step — no separate `assign` step is needed.

## Related topics [#related-topics]

[Autopilot RCA workflow templates](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/workflow-examples/integrations/autopilot-rca)

Shared prerequisites and configuration notes for all Autopilot RCA templates

[Autopilot overview](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/agentic-ai/autopilot/overview)

Learn how Autopilot investigates alerts and incidents

[Conditional logic](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/workflow-examples/basic-patterns/conditional-logic)

Use switch statements to branch on success or failure

[Send email notifications](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/setup-and-configure/actions-catalog/newrelic/notification/newrelic-notification-sendemail)

Full reference for the sendEmail action

[Create destinations](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/setup-and-configure/create-destinations)

Configure the Email destination required by this workflow

[Alert RCA with Autopilot and Slack](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/workflow-examples/integrations/autopilot-slack-rca)

Post RCA findings to Slack instead of email

[Troubleshoot Workflow Automation](https://docs.newrelic.com/docs/workflow-automation/troubleshooting)

Solutions for common Autopilot and workflow integration issues