Disable Linking Email-To-Case Records To Contacts?

Question

Is there a way to NOT link Cases created by Email-to-Case to a Contact?

In other words: Just let the Case be created, but then let a human decide to link it, if desired?

We will have more than one Contact, in many cases, with the same email address (multi-division company that does not want divisions to see each other's records even at the Contact level, much less Opportunity and other levels beneath).

Given my constraints, I need to have the Cases come in, NOT link them automatically to any Contacts, and allow the "Case Managers" to deal with them. Even the Help available on Email-To-Case mentions "don't have duplicate email addreses" on Contacts, so I'm trying the next best route.

• How does Email-to-case match an incoming email to an existing contact

When an incoming email creates a case in Salesforce via Email-to-Case, the logic looks to match the email address in the FROM field to a Contact's email address in Salesforce. If a match is returned, the system associates the created case to the related contact record.

The Email-to-Case logic will query all the Email fields on the Contact object, including Standard and Custom Email fields.

Upon finding a match in any of the email address fields, Email-to-Case will assign the contact to the new case.

If two or more contacts have the same email address, Email-to-Case will leave the contact and account fields blank.

If no matching contacts are found, email-to-case will leave the contact and account fields blank, but will populate the fields "Web Email" and "Web Name".

As a best practice, please ensure that you do not have the same email address on multiple contact records.

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UPDATE:   Salesforce support has finally verified what I already investigated - that there is no "official way" to accomplish this.

Cases will NOT LINK to a Contact in the following situations only:

• The email did not match any Contacts - To resolve this do a global search and then add a new Contact as needed
• The email matched more than one Contact - Change the email address to ensure that no email is used in more than one contact
• The email is not in the standard email field - Salesforce does not match with emails created on custom email fields. Hence ensure that standard email field in contact gets populated

My only recourse at the moment is to allow a (possible) linkup, then UNLINK it via Process Builder / Flow, then do what I want with the Case. This is not ideal depending on what is setup to happen to new Cases. I believe if I add a hidden "bypass" field that is stamped ONLY by routines I WRITE, I can get around that.

Answer 1

Your requirement is achievable.

1. Create a unique Case Origin let's say TestEmailRouting and assign this origin whenever Email-to-Case is getting created for that routing address.

2. Create a Process builder process on Case object, during case creation and update Case record as follows:

   • Contact Id to BLANK

   • CaseOrigin to Email (i.e. from TestEmailRouting to Email)

with a criteria CaseOrigin equals TestEmailRouting

You can also handle this with a recordtype.

3. Create a flow which will search for correct Contact based on emailId and division and assign the Contact to the Case. Call this flow from process builder.

Answer 2

Email to case now matches on all email fields, including custom email fields. But the auto-response will always send to preferred email, which is problematic if one thinks about it for a few milliseconds. You submit a case from email abc, and the autoresponse is sent to email xyz (and also email abc, if you check the box to copy all email addresses on the autoresponse).

There is now an easy declarative way to remove the contact from the case, using before-save flows, which fires before the auto-response rule!

The flow needs to set case.contactId and case.preferredEmail to blank (global constant empty string). I assume both are required, did not test them independently.