How can I configure salesforce to notify a customer case contact when an internal support rep sends in a email updating the ticket?

Question

I'm using SalesForce for case management. When I respond to customers through salesforce.com from my Desktop, I can send emails / case comments and they are sent from our support address ([email protected]). This works out great because the customer can then reply back to the email address that Salesforce monitors and the ticket stays updated.

I want to respond to customers cases while out and about WITHOUT sending from my individual email address. Is there a way to do this? The phone itself can't send emails from [email protected] As far as I can tell, the mobile SalesForce 1 mobile app doesn't allow me to send new case comments or email. I can only view old ones.

My old ticketing system let me send emails into [email protected] and generated a update notification email to the case contact with the full message included. I'd like to do something similar.

I was initially thinking I could do this via a workflow rule for the Email Message object. The basic config would be something like:

• Check if email from contains @company.com AND message is not in a queue.
• If both conditions are met, initiate an Immediate Workflow Action - specifically New Email
• Have the New Email action send a template with a message body variable including the prior email.

I've hit a snag though: I don't see the option for New Email when clicking Add Workflow Action. I see it for OTHER workflow rule types but not when the workflow rule object is Email Message. I'm guessing that SalesForce doesn't allow an incoming email to trigger another outbound email alert as part of a workflow rule.

If that's the case, is there another way I can accomplish this use case?

Answer 1

Here is a detailed tutorial that explains how to create a custom publisher action for Case Comments. Once you complete all the steps, the Case Comment shows up as a publisher action as shown below.

Answer 2

You can add a case comment from Salesforce1 mobile app. It automatically shows up in the list of publisher actions in the action bar at the bo, when you are viewing the case. I have only validated this on iOS, but it likely works on Android too. So case comment notification should take care of sending email to customer.

Answer 3

You are correct. Actually I dug deeper and found that ability to add case comments was a custom publisher action created in our org. So one solution for you will be to create a custom publisher action for this purpose.

Thanks, Nirav