Can an arbitrary email address be used in workflow send email activity

Question

I'm wondering if there is any way to be able to include an arbitrary email address as the To:, From:, CC: or BCC: fields of a send email activity? It appears that they must be contacts in the CRM.

I ask this because I have a requirement to cc a known group email (no actual user associated with the email...something like [email protected] it's not a queue at all). I'm concerned that if I create a CRM user for this email, that when I move to production, I'll have to change all the workflows using this email to point to the CRM entity on the production box (assuming GUID is saved with activity).

If an arbitrary email isn't possible, any other suggestions?

Arequipa

Answer 1

I'm not quite sure, if I have unterstood your question right:

You want to create a workflow which contains a send mail activity. You would like to set one of the address fields (To:, From:, CC:) to a plain mail address like '[email protected]'?

It is possible if

1. you enter the mail address by hand (do not use the field assistant)
2. you have configured that e-mails with unresolved recipients are allowed to be sent.
   See Settings -> Administration -> System Settings -> E-Mail Tab
3. you don't want to set the e-mail address with another workflow step

Nero

This is exactly what I wanted, but the workflow won't let me save if the field (FROM in this case) is unresolved. So, this isn't actually working. This does allow email activities to use unresolved emails, but not workflows (at least not that I see). – Arequipa

You are correct: the field 'from' needs an instance of an valid activity party. It is (IMHO) necessary for tracking reasons. – Nero

Answer 2

To my knowledge, the only way to do this would be to create a custom workflow assembly. This may be more trouble to you than it's worth.

Navarrete

Answer 3

I doubt it. Not without horrible SDK or Custom Workflow Activity machinations, which even then may not work. Unless you have a truly gargantuan number of workflows that must be altered, the manual approach may be the best.

It may be a terrible hack, but you might be able to replace instances of the development environment support account GUID with its production counterpart directly in SQL Server. Not in the SystemUserBase table, but in whatever workflow activities mention the support account as a CC field in an e-mail. But that is scary stuff.

You may also want to take another look at your process; a significant portion of Dynamics CRM is dedicated to handling support issues, and that includes fairly robust e-mail tracking and storage; there probably shouldn't be a need to CC this support mailbox to which you refer.

In summary: All of the options I've listed are terrible. Find a way to avoid them. :-P

Bluebill

Thanks for the info (depressing as it is, in my case). Note that this is NOT support related, that was just my sample email...probably a bad choice. – Arequipa

Answer 4

I've had this requirement before, and even with workflow activities, there doesn't seem to be a way to handle this (even though CRM will allow it through the UI).

Your instinct is right that if you create a user separately in both environments and then try to move a workflow that references that user between the environments, that the workflow references will have to be updated.

The best solution, to me, would be to go with just creating the contact/user in one environment. But then, create the contact/user in your other environments with the same Guid. You can do this through the API quite easily, or for a no-code solution, there is a Microsoft provided CRM Configuration Data Utility (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd442453.aspx) that you can use. (Note that the utility will want to migrate all records from the chosen entity, so you might want to export it to a file, edit the resulting file which is just XML, and then import to your target).

Fragment

Answer 5

This is something that you can do with CRM 2011, CRM 2013, or CRM 2015 if you have a custom entity that is email enabled and then copy the email address from your core entity even if that email address is in a custom text field to it and relate it back via a lookup field. Doing that would require a plugin in Microsoft CRM 2011, but is possible to do with real-time workflows in Microsoft CRM 2013 and Microsoft CRM 2015. This method would allow you to have email addresses associated to the records and available for usage with the CRM workflows to send emails without needing to create an additional user or contact record. This is also handy if you are working with an entity like Incidents that is a core CRM entity and is not email enabled, yet you wish to be able to send emails related to that entity. You could use this method in conjunction with the steps ccellar provided.

I've got a blog post that goes through an example of this here: http://dynamicsuniversity.com/steps-to-send-emails-to-custom-email-address-text-field-from-a-workflow/

Torquemada

Answer 6

You can write custom workflow or you should go for plugin development.

You will get details for it on below blogs.

For custom-workflow https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg334455.aspx

Blog:- https://lakshmanindian.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/custom-workflow-activity-in-microsoft-dynamics-crm-2011/

more knowledge on your email sending requirement. https://social.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/375f5dad-0382-4112-ab0d-5b42ba235d96/crm-2011-workflow-sending-email-problem?forum=crmdevelopment

Meltage