Alert Case Owner of new Email

Question

I am trying to set up a workflow rule that does the following:

• When an email reply to a case comes in ... in other words there is an email with the Status = "new" --> send an email to the Case Owner to notify they have an email to look at (trigger email alert)

This seemed straightforward at first, but I cannot access the Email Message properties when making a workflow based off the Case object.

Best solutions I have found are: http://www.salesforceben.com/update-case-status-sending-receiving-email/ and Case Emails - Client Replies (email-to-case) - Can SF Be Told To Email The Case Owner?

Neither seem to be as simple as this should be. Thanks

Answer 1

EmailMessage is a child object to Case and as such, can't be referenced within any Case workflow rule criteria or workflow field update formula. That is, one Case can have many EmailMessage.

Furthermore, a workflow fires when an SObject is created/updated and the 'event' you are interested in is the EmailMessage DML.

You can, however, use workflow rules on EmailMessage to do field updates on Case that in turn can fire a Case workflow rule that can send email alerts.

The Field Update on the EmailMessage workflow can reference fields on EmailMessage and set fields on Case (although picklist values in Case are harder to set sometimes)