Is it possible to have a web-to-case pretend to be an email-to-case?

Question

What I mean by the title is that email-to-case gives an email message in the case, to which you can easily reply to. Web-to-case just seems to fill out a bunch of fields per your choosing, but I was wondering if I could somehow spoof an email message (since we collect email addresses, subject, and description anyway). Is something like this possible?

Answer 1

EmailToCase creates a special SObject called EmailMessage, documented here.

1. The SObject can be created by APEX so you could use an after Insert trigger on Case to populate
2. If you expect to send replies to the customer from here and have the customer then reply back via email, you'll need to simulate how SFDC creates threadIds and put into the subject. This will allow emailToCase to associate the incoming reply from the customer back to the web-created Case. See SFDC Success post here.
3. Most of the fields in EmailMessage can be created - however hasAttachment can not. It is possible that if your trigger also inserts Attachment objects as children to EmailMessage, this field will populate automatically. I have not tried this.
4. You would need to simulate the field textBody from other fields you collect on the web form