Send Email Alert to Higher Level Role In Role Hierarchy

Question

I have Email Notification functionality but finding some difficulties in it.

My Requirement : I have custom field(look up datatype) called Assign_To__c which is look up to User object(standard salesforce user object). Whenever record is submitted with assign_to__c field is not equal to null, it should send an email notification to that user as well as his higher officer.

for example : see the role hierarchy below

Whenever Developer 1 is assigned then it should send email alert to developer1 and his Team Lead. This is the way I want to do. I think Workflow will work here. But I don't know the exact way to accomplish this(Don't know Which fields to use).

Answer 1

The problem is that there could be more than one user assigned the role "Team Lead". But what you probably want is the specific Team Lead for a specific Developer. (Your role hierarchy seems a little wrong, since you probably only need one role to represent developers)

Every User has a .Manager, so I'd use that to fire an email.

You will have to ensure that every User has a manager assigned.

Answer 2

Edit-changing answer based on Sebastian's comment

If your role hierarchy is reasonably small, you could create a public group for each of the senior roles for a given junior role.

Then, you would evaluate the users role, and have a separate workflow for each role that sends an email alert to the appropriate public group.

Thus wouldn't scale to a large complex hierarchy, in which case code is prob best way to go.